Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

MANAGEMENT
n. – Equivalent French: gestion; Spanish: gestión;
German: Verwaltung, Administration; Italian:
gestione; Portuguese: gestāo.
Museum management is defi ned
today as the action of ensuring the
running of the museum’s administrative
business and, more generally,
all the activities which are
not directly attached to the specifi c
fi elds of museum work (preservation,
research and communication). In this
regard, museum management essentially
encompasses tasks relating to
fi nancial (accounting, management
control, fi nances) and legal responsibilities,
to security and upkeep, to
staff management and to marketing
as well as to strategic procedures
and the general planning of museum
activities. The term management is
of Anglo-Saxon origin (although
the Anglo-Saxon term comes from
the French manège and ménage),
and is currently used in French with
the same meaning. The guidelines
or ‘style’ of management illustrate
a certain concept of museums – in
particular its relationship to public
service.
Traditionally the term administration
(from the Latin administratio,
M
service, aid, handling) was used to
defi ne this type of museum activity,
but also, more generally, all the activities
necessary to make a museum
function. The treatise of museology
by George Brown Goode, Museum
Administration (1896), examines the
aspects connected with the study of
the display of collections and the daily
management, while also addressing
the overall vision of the museum and
its integration into society. Rightfully
derived from the civil service rationale,
the act of administering means,
whether referring to a public or a private
service, ensuring that it operates
properly while taking responsibility
for initiating and running all its activities.
The notion of (public) service,
or even, with its religious undertones,
that of vocation, is closely related to
administration.
We are aware of the bureaucratic
connotation of the term ‘administration’
since it is used in connection
with the (dys)function of public
authorities. So it is not surprising that
the general evolution of economic
theory in the last quarter of a century,
favouring the market economy, has
led to increasingly frequent recourse
to the concept of management,
which had been in use for a long
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