ISS 25 (1995).pdf - The International Council of Museums

events in France.in 196B. started the new movement
among the French museums. New notions c ame into the
museum world as: identity . territory. participation
o r community. In the eighties the rentability o f
museums and the prestigious arc hitectural projects
pressed out the notion of community. Stating that
the traditional communities have split and that
individualism has got stronger, she notices the new
social groups that have a need for museums:
illiterates, immigrants rejected by the nationals,
the unemployed left outside the working community.
Posing questions like: how can museums cope with
such situation, or , are there new forms of museal
action to imagine, she opens the discussion about
the new position and forms of museums.
Lynn Haranda, from the Vancouver Museum in
Canada in her paper 'Museums and the community'
tries to present analytically the given relation.
Discussing more the concept of community than of the
museums. she states that museums serve a community
only by answering the fundamental questions on human
existence . Community is an aggregate of people with
a joint interest neighbourhood , profession.
intellectual inquiry , nationalist motives.
Identifying the contemporary pressure. the conflict
and the political meaning, she tries to search for a
solution, saying that museums are becoming
responsive to a variety of community voices and
sensitive to financial relationships, Pleading for
more complete studying of the public reactions ,
sentiments and desire, she states that communities
use the museum as a power basis from which to
disseminate their messages.
Raymond Hontpetit from the University of Quebec
in Montreal, Canada, in his paper 'Museums.
interpreters of heritage for community
appropriation' emphasizes the heritage belonging to
the communities, discussing the features of heritage
as: the living heritage of traditional cultures, the
heritage of collections, the museum heritage and the
cultural resources of postindustrial societies. He
states that the present state of heritage is marked
by hesitating between the 'national' and 'global'
heritage. Presuming that a heritage is today defined
in a more economic perspective as a leisure
resource. he sees the importance of tourism and
information highways as ways of reaching the global
community.
Teresa Cristina Scheiner from Brazil, in her
paper 'On museum, communities and the relativity of
it all', insists on the relativity of museums.
Discussing the idea of museum and museology she
stresses two basic characteristics of the museum:
its intrinsic relationship with nature and culture,
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