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

Which museums for which communities ?
Mathilde Bellaigue
Laboratoire de recbercbe des musees de France, Paris
Ab s tract
From the XVIIIth century in Europe, the history of museums sbows how their audience was
borne and bow it evolved until now. In France, the left government of 1936, then the Second World
War and, last but not least, the events of 1968 opened the way to various education folk movements.
The wave of French ecomuseums and foreign community museums came out from there. New words
were brought forth in the museum field, such as identity, territory, participation, community. Such
experiences were taken up in the world, especially in countries recently free from colonialism or
dictatorship. But, in the eighties, the Frencb cultural policy shifted, introducing the notion of
producing money and necessary rentability of the museums. Together with the industrial crisis in
textile, steel, and coal, industrial archaeology appeared, involving both the museologists and the
ancient actors of sucb activities and extending the notion of beritage to their materials. Sorts of
memory communities were issued from there.
In France, during the eighties, the accent was put upon prestigious architectural projects of
museums and the necessity for cultural organisations to produce thier own financial resources. The
.notion of community was no longer put forward.
To-day, worldwide communication leaves no more spaces, no more things to be discovered. We
must re-consider the role of artefacts in museums as much as our own attitude towards them.
Traditional communities bave split, individualism has got stronger. Are there new museums for new
communities (scbools, tourism, old people) ? Looking at the exclusion phenomena, we find new
groups : illiterates are standing out of the community of educated people, as well as immigrated
people are rejected by the nationals, and unemployed people remain out of the working community ...
How can museums cope with that situation? Are there new forms of museal action to imagine?
April 1995
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