Transformative museology

“…we have to take into account the fact that museology and museums are two completely different things.” Martin R. Shärer[1] In the 20th century, growing populations produced a growing body of heritage. The transmission of this heritage to succeeding generations coalesced into three major modern institutions: universities, library/archives and museums. Traditional systems of social and cultural memory had become overloaded and therefore evolved conceptually. This evolution took place within the primary context of a naturally occurring museology through the process I call museogenesis. The term museogenesis refers to the origin and development of museological thought in a specific cultural context. By museological thought, I refer to ideas and theories surrounding the parameters of “the natural and cultural heritage, the activities concerned with the preservation and communication of this heritage, the institutional frame-work, and society as a whole” (Mensch 1992). This broadly inclusive definition relates museology to another broadly defined concept: cultural context. By cultural context, I refer to the “webs of significance and systems of meaning which is the collective property of a group” (Geertz 1973). [1] ICOFOM Study Series – ISS 34, 2003, ISS 34_03.pdf, p.7

Museu da Abolição, “The Museum That We Want”

Museu da Abolição [Abolition Museum] was inaugurated in 1983 in the city of Recife, one of the largest cities of north-eastern Brazil, located in the state of Pernambuco. This state has a special place in the history of the country: it dates back to the colonization efforts, to the first interactions between Europeans and native peoples and the exploration of sugar cane production. Today, the region embodies not only Brazilian cultural wealth and diversity, but also the great social challenges of contemporary Brazil. The name of the museum is a reference to the Abolition of black slavery in Brazil at the end of the 19th century. A museum addressing abolition means more than addressing a historic fact. It means dealing with ideas on slavery, freedom, resistance, injustice. There are no museums isolated from society, whatever their social function. For a museum such as this one, which was created with the responsibility for a theme that echoes so strongly in the lives of men and women, the challenge of finding its place in the world has always been present.

ICOM 2010: half a century of changes and impasse

Half a century, from 1947 to 2010, is enough for us to take stock of the impact of the “ideology of Development” on Heritage. An ideology induced by UNESCO and by ICOM. What has changed and what is still in an impasse? What effects has this ideology had on Heritage? It is after making this assessment that we can better understand the extent to which the theme of this 22nd ICOM General Conference – Shangai 2010 is ultimately an obvious product of that influence.

Give or take: thoughts on museum collections as working tools and their connection with human beings

This paper proposes a look at museums from the perspective of sociomuseology, an area of research and practice under development in countries such as Portugal, Brazil and Spain. Sociomuseology was born from the Latin new museology tradition and is closely connected with the International Movement for a New Museology (MINOM/ICOM). The Lusofona University in Lisbon offers MA and PhD programmes in Sociomuseology. The University supports a research centre in Sociomuseology and publishes the journals Cadernos de Sociomuseologia, in Portuguese, and Sociomuseology, in English (for more information see http://tercud.ulusofona.pt.). Sociomuseology concerns the study of the social role of museums and of the continuous changes in society that frame their trajectories. The practice of sociomuseologists is based on their work with the different dimensions of social and community development from ecomuseums to networking and other ways of organizing social action in the 21st century in which heritage plays a strategic role.

Global models for concrete realities

This paper intends to analyze the evolution of the Ecomuseums from their early appearance in the seventies until the present, emphasizing the characteristics which make them unique and different from all the other museums. This analysis will be used to show the Japanese landscape on ecomuseums and how the ecomuseum evolution might be a reference at internatioal level.

The community museum: a space for the exercise of communal power

This paper discusses two key elements in the field of museums: a summary of the concept of the community museum, on the one hand, and, on the other, a proposal as to how this concept is put into practice, especially in the early stages of the creation of the museum, when the social basis for the project is being established. We will discuss how the community museum combines and integrates complex processes aimed at strengthening the community as a collective subject, asserting its identity, improving its quality of life and building alliances between communities. In the second part, which has a methodological focus, we will discuss how the museum is born out of community aspirations to strengthen its identity and integrity, the initial process of consensus-building, the roles of different agents, both internal and external to the community, as well as some factors that foster or prevent community appropriation. To conclude we will emphasize the potential of community museum networks as a strategy to generate a broader field of action, in which communities can exercise greater autonomy, by collectively developing and appropriating projects of regional and even international scope.

Musealising hope: reflections on the saga of an artistic installation of human solidarity

“Musealising hope” reflects on the trials and tribulations of an installation designed as a tribute to the struggle for survival of African peoples who dare make the long trek to Europe by sea. Its accomplishment involved a number of players whose conduct and reactions to events bear witness to the manner in which artists, the media, heads of cultural institutions, museologists, welfare institutions, and politicians cope with the phenomenon of immigration and with our present-day multicultural societies. In turn, this artistic endeavour and its symbolic signification highlight the changes which art and culture have undergone over the past few years and the kind of transformation which new inter-ethnic communities have brought to bear on concepts such as national heritage, identity or memory.

The Centre of Memories: work in progress. Case of the Michel Giacometti Labour Museum, Setúbal, Portugal

The work on Social Memory, focused on the biographic method and the paths of immaterial Heritage, are the fabric that we have chosen to substantiate the idea of museum. The social dimensions of memory, its construction and representation, are the thickness of the exhibition fabric. The specificity of museological work in contemporary times resembles a fine lace, a meticulous weaving of threads that flow from time, admirable lace, painstaking and complex, created with many needles, made up of hollow spots and stitches (of memories and things forgotten). Repetitions and symmetries are the pace that perpetuates it, the rhythmic grammar that gives it body. A fluid body, a single piece, circumstantial. It is always possible to create new patterns, new compositions, with the same threads. Accurately made, properly made, this lace of memories and things forgotten is always an extraordinary creation, a web of wonder that expands fantasy, generates value and feeds the endless reserve of the community’s knowledge, values and beliefs.

Japan ecomuseums: global models for concrete realities

The present document intends to analyze the different ecomuseums visited and studied in Japan trying to describe the reality of Japanese ecomuseology. From the descriptions of Japanese ecomuseums extrapolate the main features to build a model that is a possible reference for the XXI century ecomuseums.

The Maré Museum: an integrated project of community development

The Maré Museum, founded on 8 May 2006, arose from the desire of the inhabitants of the community to have a place of memory, a place that is immersed in the past and looks to the future, a place that reflects on this community, on their conditions and identities and on their territorial and cultural diversity. The intention of the Maré Museum is to break with the tradition that the experiences to be recollected and the places of memory to be remembered are those elected by the official version, the "winner" version of the story that restricts the representations of history and memory of large portions of the population. The Maré Museum, as a pioneer initiative in the city scene, proposed to expand the museological concept, so that it is not restricted to intellectual social groups and cultural spaces that are not accessible to the general population. The museum has established recognition that the slum is a place of memory and so has initiated a museographic reading of the Mare community. ..

Representing traumatic pasts at the District Six Museum

Using this metaphoric framework as a starting point, I would like to focus on the characteristics of the District Six Museum which extend its work beyond being that of representation (of traumatic memory). Representation signifies in some ways distance and separation, a telling of a story depicted for others. The work of the Museum is more akin to what could broadly speaking be described as ‘engagement’. Although this is word is much over-used, it nonetheless indicates more closely an embodied practice which invites personal insertion, empathy and emplacement. It includes a whole range of sense-making practices by those closest to the Museum’s story – the dispossessed ex-residents – who participate in the memorialisation practices of the Museum in both harmonious and dissonant ways. The architectural metaphor of this seminar is key to this approach, indicating a practice which is constructed and layered, fixed yet changeable. It speaks to a spectrum of activities related to the imperatives to develop as well as conserve – elements which are central to the Museum’s work in relation to the process of return and restitution. To signify the unfinished business of representation, the permanent exhibition is called Digging Deeper, a framework which allows for an always further uncovering of facts, meanings and perspectives.

Museu de arte popular : memórias de poder

Tendo como pano de fundo o Museu de Arte Popular, o presente trabalho procura compreender a decisão política que determinou o seu encerramento em 2008, enquadrando-a no período histórico vivido pela sociedade portuguesa desde o ano de 1948, data em que foi inaugurado, até aos nossos dias. É traçado o registo biográfico do Museu, assim como a matriz institucional que a ele preside, pretendendo-se, com o auxílio de informação produzida em várias áreas científicas complementares da museologia e presente em fontes documentais de arquivo, estabelecer uma descrição dos seus principais aspectos caracterizantes – onde se inclui a descrição do percurso institucional, do espaço expositivo, acervo, – bem como das relações funcionais verificadas entre o Museu e as diferentes tutelas dos períodos do Estado Novo e da Democracia. (Dissertação Mestrado Museologia Departamento de Museologia ULHT)

Museus, memórias e movimentos sociais

Da modernidade ao mundo contemporâneo os museus são reconhecidos por seu poder de produzir metamorfoses de significados e funções, por sua aptidão para a adaptação aos condicionamentos históricos e sociais e sua vocação para a mediação cultural. Eles resultam de gestos criadores que unem o simbólico e o material, que unem o sensível e o inteligível. Por isso mesmo cabe-lhes bem a metáfora da ponte lançada entre tempos, espaços, indivíduos, grupos sociais e culturas diferentes; ponte que se constrói com imagens e que tem no imaginário um lugar de destaque.

Documentos básicos de museologia: principais conceitos

O conceito de Património cultural ganhou nas últimas cinco décadas, novos e alargados significados, fazendo com que as motivações sociais acerca do património e seus entendimentos fossem se alargando e intensificando, não apenas entre os técnicos e especialistas das diferentes áreas de actuação, mas também a outros sectores da sociedade. Durante toda a primeira metade do século XX, as acções de preservação e de pertença do património cultural, no que tange às referências arquitectónicas, centravam-se, quase que exclusivamente, na preservação dos edifícios/ monumentos que detivessem significados históricos, de unicidades/ raridades, de antiguidade e sobretudo de urbanidade; no que tange as referências museológicas, a preservação estava voltada para as referências materiais e móveis do património cultural.

Concepción, método y vinculación de la museología comunitaria

a museología comunitaria es una disciplina de las ciencias sociales que tiene como propósito fundamental desarrollar un proceso de organización comunitaria en torno a la planeación y operación de espacios educativos y culturales dedicados a la investigación, protección, conservación, valoración y difusión del patrimonio natural y cultural de una comunidad o región determinada, cuya misión es promover e instrumentar procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje que contribuyan en el desarrollo integral para el mejoramiento de la calidad de vida de la población. La museología comunitaria se sustenta en tres conceptos básicos: 1. El Territorio; 2. El patrimonio y 3. La comunidad. A diferencia de la museología tradicional, la museología comunitaria va más allá de un edificio, una colección y un público, es decir, concibe el museo como el contexto donde la comunidad enfrenta y satisface sus necesidades e intereses para garantizar su preservación, reproducción y existencia, dicho con otras palabras, el museo comunitario es el conjunto de formas y contenidos específicos que presenta el patrimonio natural y cultural de una comunidad, patrimonios que tienen una presencia y significación propia, tanto material como espiritual, como partes constitutivas de la cultura general de la misma comunidad.