Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

I NTRODUCTION
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Running a Museum: A Practical Handbook 1 ), while they are much rarer
in France or in the old eastern European countries, which favour essay
writing and developing thought and theory.
It would nevertheless be too caricatural to divide museum
literature into a practical component, strictly Anglo-American, and a
theoretical component, closer to the Latin way of thinking: the number
of theoretical essays written by Anglo-Saxon thinkers in museum
literature completely contradicts this picture. The fact remains that
a number of differences exist, and differences are always enriching to
learn and to appreciate. We have tried to take this into consideration.
Finally it is important to pay tribute, through the choice of the
French language, to the fundamental theoretical work continued for
many years by the fi rst two directors of ICOM, Georges Henri Rivière
and Hugues de Varine, without whom a large part of the museum
work in continental Europe and in the Americas and Africa could not
be understood. A fundamental refl ection on the museum world cannot
overlook its history, just as it must keep in mind that its origins were
anchored in the Enlightenment and that its transformation (that is its
institutionalisation) occurred at the time of the French Revolution, but
also that the theoretical foundations were laid on the other side of the
Berlin wall during the 1960s when the world was still divided into two
antagonistic blocs. Although the geopolitical order was completely
overturned nearly a quarter of a century ago, it is important that
the museum sector should not forget its own history – this would be
absurd for an instrument that passes culture on to the public and to
future generations! However, there is still a risk of a very short memory
which retains from museum history only how to run such institutions
and how to attract visitors…
A constantly evolving structure
Right from the start it was not the authors’ aim to write a ‘defi nitive’
treatise about the museum world, an ideal theoretical system cut off
1. BOYLAN P. (coord.), Running a Museum: A Practical Handbook, Paris, ICOM/Unesco, 2004.
http//:unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001410/141067e.pdf (accessed: June 2010).