A few thoughts from a museologist with a business degree (original) (raw)
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Museum Magazine, 2018
Topic: The training and professional development of museum staff What are the essential qualities that make a good museum professional in present day museum world? The ideal (museum) professional is a devotee of his/hers (museum) specialization but with a strong sense of belonging to a wider whole. Are dermatologists, gynecologists or pulmonologists distinctive professions? No, they are occupations, specializations within the medical profession and exist by the arguments of medical science. So, I if you accept the comparison, I would say, that talented, noble and responsible curators can exist as the result of a happy coincidence, but no job let alone a profession can be founded upon such fortuity. But talent and devotion helped by seminars, symposia and practice, create however, many good professionals. They have a broad insight into their basic academic discipline and deep interest in understanding of the world around them. Only from that can they provide the users of their museums with a needed, correct, honest product. What are some changes compared with the past standard? Alas, there has never been an international standard, which is both, good and bad. Generally, the changes are great and beneficial: more and more future curators receive some kind of professional training but it has to become obligatory and,-good. Our conference in Dubrovnik is part of that collective effort in learning (at least) by the best examples (www.thebestinheritage.com). However, this partly spontaneous process is not what any profession would consider as strategy for its future. The disastrous fact is that probably 80% of curators working in museums have received only their specialist academic training and no specific education for the public service they run. What kind of young talent is most likely to shape the future of the museum? I am afraid that the future of museums will increasingly depend upon holders of power. But we have to master as much of our mission as possible. The young, talented, scientifically well trained, educated for the heritage profession and devoted to public good might assure us some chances. Privatization, commodification and commercialization are destroying professions. I hope some countries and cultures will know how to retain public services and prevent delivering the society unconditionally to the profit predators. We need to have young curators who will finally establish a profession. Societies thrive on professions and they have been created for that. A good memory on what values humanity is founded will be the condition for survival of the mankind when casino capitalism finally pushes the world into the abyss of artificial intelligence, cyborgs and hybrid human beings. We desperately need the memory of quality, of basic values and virtues of humanitas. We need those with a mission,-who want the world get better,-if that does not sound obsolete in this cynical and hypocritical world. The public can learn only from those whom it loves; on the other hand, to be loved one must love first.
Contemporary museum and society. The museum communicator: new perspectives for the profession
2023
GREEN ROOM Cultural policies, governance and sustainable development Chair Eleonora Cutrini BLUE ROOM Cultural heritage and heritage communities Chair Mara Cerquetti YELLOW ROOM Cultural tourism in an era of uncertainty Chair Patrizia Silvestrelli 12.30-14:00 BREAK / LUNCH 14:00-16:30 PARALLEL SESSION 2 GREEN ROOM Cultural and creative industries, green transition and digital transformation Chair Giovanna Segre BLUE ROOM Innovating the heritage system: the role of universities and public authorities Chair Mara Del Baldo YELLOW ROOM Museums and digital innovations Chair Ludovico Solima BOOK SESSION in Italian (on site / online) Luciana Lazzeretti L'ascesa della società algoritmica ed il ruolo strategico della cultura (FrancoAngeli, 2021) Ludovico Solima Le parole del museo. Un percorso tra management, tecnologie digitali e sostenibilità (Carocci, 2022
Examining the Social Responsibility of Museums in a Changing World
ARTES, 2011
Because of the power museums are capable of exercising, it is appropriate and necessary that we have f ights about what is presented there. Museums are, af ter all, where the national narrative is blocked out and staged and where our sense of the world is inf ormed, if not shaped. “Perhaps,” Susan Crane writes, “we can also enjoy museums which confound and confabulate.” Perhaps, but the relationship between museums and their audiences has proved f ar more dif f icult to renegotiate than we thought. We have learned to our regret that there is a torrent of rage and tears waiting to break through the fragile membrane of civility at any time. Still, while for many museum professionals Mining the Museum has been a path not taken, f or others, its rewards have transcended its attendant difficulties and risks. We are still aspiring to decipher what his methods reveal about our medium and its largely unrealized potential. It appears that for visitors as well as prof essionals museums can and should act as interlocutors between the past and the present, between ourselves and the other—and that we should be ready to take the consequences of doing so. Af ter all, through our portals pass large numbers of people of diverse backgrounds and conditions and interests and learning styles. Their lives are in the process of changing, whether they know it or not; they are in the constant process of learning, whether they know it or not. Museums can, if we choose, assist in these metamorphoses by opening unseen windows on cloaked realities. Or we can retard them. Museum people, some of them at least, are thinking long and hard about who we are supposed to be in this moment. Some at least have concluded we have the right and the duty to choose which role to play in this unf olding, epic drama.
Museums: Promoting Cultural Awareness
Museum Anthropology, 1987
retired secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has stated that museums are an enigma both to those who enter them as visitors and to those who work in them. They are enigmas because few people ever bother to think about what a museum is and what it does. Why do we have museums, what goes on behind the facade of halls and galleries? Even if most people do not know what a museum is, our society feels they are a necessary part of our lives. Millions of people visit our over 5,000 museums each year. Every six days in this country a new museum is founded. In view of this, it is especially fitting to think about what anthropology museums are and their special role in American society.
MUSEUMS IN THE LIFE OF THE PUBLIC
The present paper aims to emphasize how, in the latest years, more and more events and museum practices focus on the identification of new ways of engaging more individuals into the museum life, even exploring the possibility to extend and adapt the museum activities in the life of communities, according to the actual realities. In this regard we selected a number of relevant institutions in the field (museums, cultural forums etc.) and analyzed their innovative museum practices regarding the visitors and their engagement into the life of the museum. The results revealed that to attract more visitors and to increase public engagement, a museum must to be as a living entity who adapts its needs to the present cultural, economic, social, educational and technological context.
Of Mice and Museums: The Changing Practices of doing Museums
Elore
Inkeri Hakamies M arketization-the introduction of competition into the public sector-and digitalization of society, are two epochal changes that have emerged during my lifetime, penetrating a major portion of our everyday activities (Borowiecki, Forbes & Fresa 2016, xx). Cultural institutions have not been immune to these changes: Museums today need marketing strategies, outreach programmes, and digital collection management tools-things that were quite unheard of some decades ago. How have these transformational changes affected the function and perception of museums, and the people who work for them? These two questions go hand in hand, because it is impossible to separate a museum from the people who work for it. They decide the "what" and "how" of the exhibitions and shape the public image of their institutions. Their practices create museums. So how have the social practices and professional identities of museum workers changed in the last decades? What practices do they consider meaningful, how has this perception changed, and how might it create hierarchies between the "right" and "wrong" kind of museums? These are the questions I have tackled in my dissertation, using empirical research materials, namely recorded interviews with museum professionals and questionnaire answers from museum visitors. The material tells a story of the Finnish museum field of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and how it changed in that time.
By reporting on a selection of innovative museological and museographical practices that are being experimented by some major European museums, the volume offers an overview on the revision of their mission, strategies and tools to enhance the approach towards the contemporary multi-cultural society. With contributions by: Cécile Aufaure, Luca Basso Peressut, Richard Benjamin, Peter Bjerregaard, Christoph Bongert, Pierangelo Campodonico, Bambi Ceuppens, Denis Chevallier, Alexandre Delarge, Angela Jannelli, Vito Lattanzi, Hélène du Mazaubrun, Marie Poinsot, Cathy Ross, Michel Rouger, Ramzi Tadros, Sonia Thiel.