Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

INSTITUTION
n. (From the Latin institutio, convention, setting
up, establishment, arrangement). Equivalent
in French: institution; Spanish: institución;
German: Institution; Italian: istituzione; Portuguese:
instituiçāo.
Generally speaking an institution
indicates a convention established by
mutual agreement between people,
being thus arbitrary but also historically
dated. Institutions are elements
in the broad range of solutions that
mankind has created to answer the
problems raised by the natural needs
of life in a society (Malinowski,
1944). More specifi cally, institution
refers to an organism that is public or
private, established by society to fi ll a
specifi c need. The museum is an institution
in the sense that it is governed
by an identifi ed legal system of
public or private law (see the terms
Management and Public). Whether
it is based on the concept of public
trust (in Anglo-Saxon law) or public
ownership (in France from the Revolution),
demonstrates, beyond the
differences in conventions, a mutual
agreement between the people in a
society, that is to say an institution.
In French, when the term is associated
with the general qualifi er
‘museal’ (institution muséale, in the
I
common sense of that which relates
to museums) it is often used as a
synonym for ‘museum’, most often
to avoid excessive repetition of the
word museum. The concept of institution,
for which there are three
precise accepted meanings, is nevertheless
central to debates regarding
museums.
1. There are two levels of institutions,
according to the nature of the
need they are intended to satisfy.
This need may be fi rst of all biological
(need to eat, to reproduce, to
sleep, etc.) or secondly the result of
the demands of living in a society
(need for organisation, defence,
health, etc.). These two levels correspond
to two types of institution
that are unequally restrictive: meals,
marriage, lodging on the one hand,
and the State, the army, schools, hospitals,
on the other. In so far as they
meet a social need (sensory relation
to objects) museums belong to the
second category.
2. ICOM defi nes museum as a permanent
institution in the service of
society and its development. In this
sense the institution is a construction
created by man in the museal (see this
term) fi eld, and organised in order to
enter into a sensory relationship with
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