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

heritage, a source of local identity and an instrument to acknowledge such
identity ...
Ten years later, Hugues de Varine supports new museological tendencies
and experiences which link the museum to its social environment and give it an
unprecedented pedagogical projection. The Declaration of Quebec, a true
ideological platform for museologists, became later the document which grouped
all new socialization trends of museums.
As from the Round Table in Santiago, Chile in 1972, the conception of an
integral museum privileged its social and political aspects. Through the
implementation of more integral services, it reached new sectors of the
population, including a previously alien public.
In 1992 -exactly twenty years later- museums' representatives of Latin
America and the Caribbean met in Caracas, Venezuela to update the problems of
the Santiago meeting. They reached final conclusions which figure in the
Declaration of Caracas, a document of great value which assesses the new
challenges faced by museology at present.
Museums' activities, which were before addressed almost exclusively to
students and tourists, contemplate now other social sectors which result highly
benefitted by the social and cultural action displayed and the participation of the
popUlation: museums where the subject plays an active role in the teachinglearning
process; museums that are alternative education spaces and bring the
subject into closer contact with the museological discourse in a critical, reflexive
manner.
The paradigms which before supported the social, political and cultural
practices and theories are now not enough to explain changes produced by
globalization. The museum-related discourse may not come to a happy ending if it
has no valid interlocutor to demand concrete, dynamic actions. If the museum
does not render a service to the community, it is condemned to disappear. Today,
a more demanding society, more participative and creative, obliges him to review
its practices, its functions and objectives which must be now supported by
policies which tie closer bonds with the community.
The use of methodological strategies -which permit the community to reencounter
itself through the museum- is based on the defense and preservation
of the integral heritage, natural and cultural. They foster a process of collective
transformation which, as from the existing reality, promotes the development of
social awareness.
Important experiences on the part of community museums show they have
contributed to rescuing collective memory, historical moments which contribute to
recovering the identity of a community.
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