Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

OBJECT [MUSEUM
OBJECT] OR MUSEALIA
n. – (from the Latin objectum, past participle
objectare, to throw against) – Equivalent
in French: objet; Spanish: objeto; German:
Objekt, Gegenstand; Italian: oggetto; Portuguese:
objecto, (Brazilian: objeto)
The term museum object is sometimes
replaced by the neologism
musealia, modelled on the Latin neuter
noun musealium with musealia in
the plural. The equivalent in French:
muséalie (rarely used), musealia; Spanish:
musealia; German: Musealie,
Museumsobjekt; Italian: musealia;
Portuguese: musealia.
In the simplest philosophical
sense of the word an object is not in
itself a form of reality, but a product,
a result, or an equivalence. In other
words it means that which is placed,
or thrown forward ( ob-jectum,
Gegen-stand) by a subject, who treats
it as different from himself, even if he
considers himself as an object. This
distinction between the subject and
the object developed relatively late
and is a feature of Western culture.
In this way the object is different
from the thing, which is related to
the subject as a continuation or an
implement (for example, a tool as a
continuation of the hand is a thing
and not an object).
O
A museum object is something
which is musealised; a thing can be
defi ned as any kind of reality in general.
The expression ‘museum object’
could almost be a pleonasm in so far
as the museum is not only the place
which shelters objects, but also a
place with the principal mission of
transforming things into objects.
1. The object is not in any case
raw, reality or simply a given item
which it would be suffi cient to collect,
for example, to be part of a
museum’s collection, as one would
collect seashells on the shore. It is an
ontological status which, in given circumstances,
a particular thing will
assume, on the understanding that
the thing would not be considered
an object in other circumstances.
The difference between the thing
and the object lies in the fact that the
thing has become a concrete part of
life and that the relationship we have
with it is a relationship of affection
or symbiosis. This is revealed by the
animism of societies often reputed
to be ‘primitive’: it is a relationship
of usability, as is the case of the tool
adapted to the shape of the hand.
By contrast, an object is always that
which the subject sets down in front
of himself, and separate from him; it
is thus what is ‘facing’ and different.
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