Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

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72 establishment. The notion of public is central to almost all of the current defi nitions of museum: “institution … at the service of society and its development, open to the public” (ICOM, 2007). It is also a “collection … the conservation and display of which are of public interest and intended for public knowledge, education and enjoyment” (Law on the museums of France, 2002), or again “an institution which owns and uses material objects, preserves them and exhibits them to the public according to regular opening hours” (American Association of Museums, Accreditation Program, 1973); the defi nition published in 1998 by the Museums Association (UK) replaced the adjective ‘public’ with the noun ‘people’. The very notion of public closely associates the museum activities with its users, even those who are intended to benefi t from it but do not use its services. By users we mean of course the visitors – the public at large – about whom we think fi rst of all, forgetting that they have not always played the central role that the museum recognises today, because there are many specifi c publics. Museums have opened up to everyone only gradually, being fi rst of all a place for artistic training and for the territory of the learned and scholarly. This opening, which has led museum staff to take an increasing interest in all its visitors and also in the population that does not visit museums, has fostered the growth of ways of interpreting the museum to all the users, as we can see by the new words used over time: people, public at large, nonpublic, distant public, disabled or frail; users, visitors, observers, spectators, consumers, audience, etc. The development of the professional fi eld of exhibition critics, many of whom present themselves as “public advocates” or “for the voice of the public”, is evidence of this current tendency to reinforce the idea that the public is at the core of general museum operations. Essentially since the end of the 1980s we talk of a real “turn towards the public” in museal action, to show the growing importance of museum visits and take account of the needs and expectations of visitors (which corresponds to what we also call “the commercial trend of museums”, even if the two do not necessarily go together). 3. By extension, in the models of community museums and ecomuseums, the public has been extended to cover the whole of the population in the areas in which they are set. The population is the basis of the museum and in the case of the ecomuseum, it becomes the main player and no longer the target of the establishment (see Society). DERIVATIVES: DISABLED PUBLIC, MINORITY PUBLIC, NON-PUBLIC, PUBLIC AT LARGE, PUBLIC RELATIONS, PUBLICITY, TARGET PUBLIC. CORRELATED: AUDIENCE, ASSESSMENTS, COMMUNITY, CUSTOMERS, ECOMUSEUM, EVALUATION, EVALUATORS, LOYALTY BUILDING, PEOPLE, POPULATION, PRIVATE, SOCIETY, SPECTATORS, ENQUIRIES, TOURISTS, USERS, VISITING, VISITORS.
RESEARCH n. – Equivalent in French: recherche; Spanish: investigación; German: Forschung; Italian: ricerca; Portuguese: pesquisa, investigaçāo. Research consists of exploring predefi ned fi elds with the purpose of advancing the knowledge of these and the action it is possible to carry out in these fi elds. In the museum, research consists of the intellectual activities and work aimed at discovery, invention, and the advancement of new knowledge connected with the museum collections, or the activities it carries out. 1. Until 2007 ICOM presented research in the French (and offi - cial) version of the defi nition of museum, as the driving force behind its functioning, the objective of the museum being to carry out research on the material evidence of man and society, which is why the museum “acquires, conserves, and exhibits” this evidence. This formal defi nition which presented the museum as a kind of laboratory (open to the public) no longer represents museal reality today, since a large part of the research such as was carried out in the last third of the 20 th century has been moved from museums to laboratories and universities. Now R the museum “acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity” (ICOM, 2007). This defi nition, shorter than the previous one (and with the term “fait des recherches” [does research] in French replaced by “étudier” [study]) nonetheless remains essential to the general operations of the museum. Research is one of the three activities of the PRC model (Preservation – Research – Communication) proposed by the Reinwardt Academie (Mensch, 1992) to defi ne the functioning of museums; it appears to be a fundamental element for thinkers as different as Zbyněk Stránský or Georges Henri Rivière, and many other museologists from central and eastern Europe, such as Klaus Schreiner. At the Musée national des Arts et traditions populaires (The National Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions), and more precisely through his works on l’Aubrac, Rivière perfectly illustrated the repercussions of the scientifi c research programme for all the functions of a museum, in particular its acquisition, publication and exhibition policies. 2. Aided by market mechanisms which have favoured temporary exhibitions to the detriment of per- 73
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Key Concepts of Museology
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With the assistance of the Musée R
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F OREWORD The development of profes
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FOREWORD for Museums, its publicati
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PREFACE 12 covered by each term, to
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I NTRODUCTION What is a museum? How
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I NTRODUCTION everyone shares a com
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I NTRODUCTION from reality. The rel
Page 21: I NTRODUCTION In the early 1980s th
Page 24 and 25: 24 New functions that emerged in th
Page 26 and 27: 26 COLLECTION n. - Equivalent in Fr
Page 28 and 29: 28 its assumed materiality as a sta
Page 30 and 31: 30 not mean that the visitor is not
Page 32 and 33: 32 is a theoretical and methodologi
Page 34 and 35: 34 American Association of Museums)
Page 36 and 37: 36 interactions specifi c to this p
Page 38 and 39: 38 tion (the exact meaning of which
Page 40 and 41: 40 ciples of history, history of ar
Page 42 and 43: 42 5. The institution of heritage a
Page 44 and 45: 44 objects. The museum institution,
Page 46 and 47: 46 time within profi t-making organ
Page 48 and 49: 48 which mobilises diverse technolo
Page 50 and 51: 50 be incapable of using the resour
Page 52 and 53: 52 sory perception, experiment, and
Page 54 and 55: 54 Etymologically speaking museolog
Page 56 and 57: 56 because it includes all the othe
Page 58 and 59: 58 many that attest to a “specifi
Page 60 and 61: 60 museum in its exterior theatre o
Page 62 and 63: 62 In this sense the object is abst
Page 64 and 65: 64 of a language of substitution. W
Page 66 and 67: 66 another museal institution, dest
Page 68 and 69: 68 Committee for the Training of Pe
Page 70 and 71: 70 guide-lecturer or lecturer, who
Page 74 and 75: 74 manent ones, part of the fundame
Page 76 and 77: 76 heterogeneous groups of people (
Page 78 and 79: BIBLIOGRAPHY 78 BUCK R., GILMORE J.
Page 80 and 81: BIBLIOGRAPHY 80 KARP I. et al. (Ed.
Page 82 and 83: BIBLIOGRAPHY 82 SCHEINER T., 2007.
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