SPECIAL ISSUE

Museums and cultural landscapes

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ICOM news

Credit: Roberto Mascaroni

www.milano2016.icom.museum

MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

3 - 9 July 2016

N°3-4 2015 | ICOMNEWS 1

2Museum NewsEvents, openings, people…

4Case StudyIllustrious landscapes

8In FocusMuseums sounding the alarmWhere are we going?

10Special Report Common groundA sense of placeAzulejo awarenessReinvigorating a remote hilltopOut of the woodCollaborative landscapes

22Heritage in DangerFrom collecting to protecting

24General ConferenceICOM Milan 2016

26ICOM CommunityNews from the ICOM network

28PublicationsSeeing green

16 November, 2015

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris of the night of 13 November, our thoughts go to those around the world who have been affected by this blind violence. The International Council of Museums and its network of professionals worldwide

stand by those who defend museums and heritage, culture and peace.

At the 38th session of UNESCO’s General Conference, the Recommendation concerning the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, their Diversity and their Role in Society was unanimously adopted by Member States1, who highlighted the essential work undertaken by ICOM and the UNESCO Secretariat for the recognition of museums and collections; the defence of the role of museum professionals; the understanding of the importance of inventories in contributing to the safeguarding of collections; and the development of the social role of museums on a regional and community level. After five decades, a new normative instrument has been developed, inspiring us to uphold our engagement within an ever-changing museum sphere.

The Emergency Red List of Libyan Cultural Objects at Risk was launched by ICOM on 15 December in Paris. A new Red List on West Africa, with a focus on Mali, is being finalised. In 2016, a new list on Yemen will be drawn up by the Secretariat with the help of international experts. The German version of the Iraqi Red List will be launched in January. We all remain mobilised for the safeguarding and protection of cultural goods in areas of armed conflict around the world.

In these times of contemplation, let us cite Paul Veyne, in his recent work, entitled Palmyra, the Irreplaceable Treasure: “Only knowing, only wanting to know a single culture, one’s own, is condemning oneself to live under a candle snuffer”2.

May the coming months be a source of calm for all. The ICOM General Conference to be held from 3 to 9 July, 2016 in Milan will allow us to discuss issues related to museums and cultural landscapes, with a finalised programme that you can find on the website of the General Conference. Please register and join us in Lombardy3.

We hope you enjoy the read, and wish you all the best in 2016.

Prof. Dr Hans-Martin Hinz Prof. Dr Anne-Catherine Robert-Hauglustaine ICOM President ICOM Director General

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Notes1 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002338/233892e.pdf 2 Paul Veyne, Palmyre, l’irremplaçable trésor. Paris, Albin Michel, 2015, p. 141.3 To register, please visit: http://network.icom.museum/icom-milan-2016/registration/how-to-register/

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EventsOn 23 October, 2015, the Board of ICOM NATHIST (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Natural History) announced the ratification of the Taipei Statement on Natural History Museums and Biodiversity Conservation at the ICOM NATHIST Global Conference, held at the National Taiwan Museum. The purpose of the statement is to codify natural history museums’ commitment to preserving natural ecosystems. The statement (excerpted) reads: ‘Increased human activities have created catastrophic declines in biodiversity. Both ethics and logic point to a mandate to conserve vulnerable habitats and species. To achieve best practice, natural history museums take action to conserve natural habitats and populations.’ Said NATHIST President, Dr Eric Dorfman: ‘ICOM NATHIST is committed to supporting the best practice in the sector. We are looking forward to working with institutions who are innovating in this important area.’ The full text of the statement is available on the ICOM NATHIST website.

On 11 December, 2015, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) in São Paulo (Brazil) reinaugurated its second-floor exhibition space, bringing back the iconic glass easel display (pictured) designed by the museum’s architect, Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992), after nearly two decades of disuse. The monumental space features 119 artworks from the museum’s collection, dating from 4 BC to 2008, exhibited on transparent supports that consist of a glass pane held

upright by a concrete base. The easels have been reconstructed with updated engineering and materials in order to revive Bo Bardi’s vision, which subverts traditional progressive, linear and unidirectional approaches to exhibition design, in favour of design free from any predetermined path. In his first year as MASP Director, Adriano Pedrosa has sought to critically revise the museum’s origins – ‘not in a nostalgic way, but rather, as a starting point for finding a new path and programme for MASP,’ in his words.

TechnologyThe UK-based Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) was founded in 2012 as a joint venture between Harvard University, the University of Oxford and the government of the United Arab Emirates, in order to promote the fusion of new digital imaging technologies and traditional archaeological techniques. In collaboration with UNESCO and the Dubai Museum of the Future Foundation, IDA has launched the Million Image Database in order to document at-risk sites and artefacts throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Some 5,000 low-cost, high-tech 3D cameras will be distributed to dedicated volunteer photographers by early 2016, enabling them to capture high-quality scans at important sites in conflict zones, uploaded through the IDA web portal for inclusion in the open-access

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MUSEUM NEWS

Museum expansion projects present an exciting opportunity for development and innovation. Jeff Levine, Chief Marketing

and Communications Officer at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), showcased the museum’s successful marketing strategy to an international audience of 360 museum professionals at this year’s Communicating the Museum, the annual international art communications conference organised by Paris-based cultural communications agency Agenda.

In May 2015, the Whitney Museum’s move from Madison Avenue to a new space designed by Renzo Piano in the Meatpacking District of downtown Manhattan was a great success, thanks in large part to its successful multi-year marketing and communication strategy. How did the museum get audiences involved in this transformative process? Levine explains the approach and philosophy behind his masterplan.

Clarify who you areThe Whitney Museum’s collection is its core. The marketing campaign emphasises modernity, clarity and style, but most of all, it embraces the new location and shines a light on American art. ‘When launching your identity, you don’t want to throw a new identity in the midst of your biggest marketing campaign. You need to establish a clear system years before the reopening.’

Work with the press effectively‘The architecture critics tend to lead the process and set the tone of the response. By delaying their feedback, the art inside the galleries can have a greater impact on the public’s opinion of the new building.’

Move forward as a team‘New buildings are complex; they require thousands of decisions over many years. Of all the decisions we made, the one that was most important was to really approach this as a united front.’ To summarise the museum’s fundamental approach, Levine quotes Harry S. Truman: ‘It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you do not care who gets the credit.’

Key learnings Think small: The small simple ideas can be as powerful as the complicated ones. Think deep: Make sure you tell the stories that wouldn’t necessarily be told Think personal: Include a personal note on your museum Think big: promote your museum in a very bold way

Watch this presentation and many more from CTM 2015: www.agendacom.com/en/communicating_the_museum

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New Whitney Museum, New York, 2015

Renaissance for the Whitney

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database. The images will be used for research, heritage appreciation, educational programmes and 3D replication, the first of which is scheduled for April 2016.

The inaugural Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections (WeDigBio) event was held from 22 to 25 October, 2015, enabling ‘citizen scientists’ to help make specimen data available to researchers worldwide. During this period, volunteers at 32 museums and universities around the globe completed some 30,000 digital transcriptions of labels of biodiversity research specimens, ranging from pinned insects to pressed plants, with others participating via online transcription platforms. An initiative of iDigBio

(Integrated Digitized Biocollections), the Smithsonian Institution, the Australian Museum, Florida State University, the University of Florida and other institutions, this collaborative transcription effort enhances the span of biodiversity research across time, taxa and geographies.

OpeningsThe National Gallery Singapore was unveiled by Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong

on 23 November, 2015. The new museum showcases the largest existing public collection of modern art from Singapore and Southeast Asia. Dedicated to collaborative research, education and exhibitions, the Gallery highlights the importance of modern art in the region in a global context. ‘Looking at art is a way of engaging in national and regional dialogues about identity and belonging,’ said its Chairman, Hsieh Fu Hua. Resulting from the restoration and transformation of two national monuments, the former Supreme Court and City Hall, the new museum aims to be a leading civic and cultural destination for the enrichment, enjoyment and engagement of Singapore residents and visitors from around the world.

PeopleDr Hartwig Fischer has been appointed Director of the British Museum, and will take up his functions in spring 2016. He has served as Director General of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections) since 2012, responsible for 14 museums and four separate institutions in four cities. There, his focus has been on modernising and developing the State Art Collections, which date to the 16th century. He previously served as Director of the Folkwang Museum in Essen (2006-2012), and began his museum career at the Kunstmuseum in Basel, where he was curator of 19th century and Modern Art (2001-2006). Fischer follows in the footsteps of Neil MacGregor, who served as Director of the British Museum for 13 years. ■

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Illustrious landscapesCASE STUDY MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

ICOM Italy has taken a survey of museum-led projects around the bel paese that contribute to contemplation of the 2016 ICOM General Conference theme, Museums and cultural landscapes.

Digital PanoramaDigital Panorama is an installation at the National Cinema Museum in Turin, offering the public a spectacular experience that enjoyed unprecedented popularity before the birth of cinema. The ‘panorama’ is an

immense 360° landscape work exhibited in a round building, invented by the painter Robert Barker in 1787 to give viewers the experience of unknown or familiar landscapes. The painting had to be viewed from a platform in the middle of the rotunda

to give the impression of immersion in the actual landscape depicted by the artist.

Today, this experience is once again offered in a modern exhibition space at the National Cinema Museum. Visitors can see the same view of the city that is visible from the top of the Mole Antonelliana, landmark Turin building, from a height of 85m. Digital technology makes it possible to interact with the reworked landscape – scrolling and zooming, searching for details of the image and browsing the sites of Turin, activating films from the museum’s collec-tion to journey back in time, discovering how Turin has changed from the early 20th century to today.

A multi-sensory exhibition has led to the creation of a panorama that is visual as well as aural, enabling travel through time and space using the sounds of the city. ■

National Cinema Museum, Turin: http://www.museocinema.it

View of the other RomeThe works of Italian and foreign artists depicting Italy in the years of the Grand Tour displayed in the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome were the starting point for study of the landscape from a multicul-tural perspective.

Students from an array of ethnic and geographical backgrounds were involved – through animated tours, workshops in the museum and a school study on the diaries of 18th and 19th century travellers – exploring the theme of travel and landscape repre-sentation. The outcome of the project is a book in which the 76 students involved recount their respective impressions of Rome upon their arrival in Italy. Alongside the texts, with the help of the photography teacher, the students produced montages combining a photo of themselves with images of the city that are meaningful to them.

Faure’s Colosseum (1835) inspired the maths and science workshop. By observing the painting, the students were able to

work out the time when the action of the work took place and detect differences in light between dusk in Rome and in tropical climates, where many of the students originally come from. ■

National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome: http://www.gnam.beniculturali.it

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Student montage, National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome

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Valle dell’Aso Ecomuseum and its identitiesValle dell’Aso Ecomuseum and its identities places the landscape at the heart of its activities as tangible evidence of the way that a commu-nity, to meet its needs, has shaped places. This open museum space capitalises on and coordinates local cultural dynamics, the creation of synergies with tourism and the economy, environmental aware-ness and the promotion of sustainability initiatives, and stimulates the socio-economic development of the area.

The residents consider the museum to be a diverse cultural venue for encounters, sharing and developing joint welfare initia-tives. A tool for meeting and deepening understanding between organisations (local authority bodies, schools and more) and local communities (cultural and youth associations, grassroots organisations) through targeted initiatives (Map of community, Map of knowledge and flavours, Valdaso Ecofesta, The art of cooking), it expresses the area’s creative capability. Its innovative approach to governance has been recognised within the Marche Region. ■

Valle dell’Aso Ecomuseum: http://www.ecomuseovalledellaso.it

A valley along the wayThis initiative was launched in 2013 in the Tuscan town of Chiusi della Verna, in the Vallesanta valley, proposed by the Casentino Ecomuseum (Union of Municipalities of Casentino Montani) and the Vallesanta Ecomuseum Association, with financial support from the Tuscany Region. It is the direct continuation of the initiative for the ‘Vallesanta Communities Map’ produced in 2009. Using the same participatory methods, the project has moved from an inventory of landscape values to issues of cultural tourism practices, particularly based on the rediscovery and use of the local network of historical paths.

Through ‘designing walks’, the collective reopening and tidying of the paths, the drafting of a charter and the creation of art projects, and with the involvement of the local school, the project has made an important contribution to knowledge and the sharing of the valley’s values. ■

Casentino Ecomuseum: http://www.ecomuseo.casentino.toscana.itVallesanta Ecomuseum Association: http://www.ecomuseo.casentino.toscana.it/il-progetto/le-antenne-1/ecomuseo-della-vallesanta

Traces of ValmarecchiaThe landscapes and heritage of Valmarecchia, in the northern Italian region of Emilia Romagna, are being revisited by students from the area under the guidance of the Ethnographic Museum of Santarcangelo di Romagna. The students, acting as ‘ambas-sadors’ of Valmarecchia, highlight ‘traces’ that may include historical events, landscapes, artworks and more, which they recount using their own voices and forms of expression. This authentic landscape experience led to the creation of an interpretive ‘journey’ through the valley using the five senses, with two videos and a map of the tourist routes, from Badia Tedalda to Rimini. Texts from these ‘sensory’ routes are translated into English, French, German and Russian. The project won the 2013 competition Io Amo i Beni Culturali (I love cultural assets) organised by the Istituto per i beni artistici, culturali e naturali of the Emilia Romagna Region, an advisory body to local authorities in the field of cultural heritage. ■

Ethnographic Museum, Santarcangelo di Romagna: http://www.metweb.org/met

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Tourist route, Valmarecchia

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The journal for museum scholars and professionals worldwide

Published since 1948, Museum International is an important and influential academic journal for museum scholars and professionals in a variety of disciplines. In 2013, UNESCO transferred the journal to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and it is now published by ICOM in partnership with the existing co-publisher, Wiley.

This present issue of Museum International is the third to be published under ICOM’s aegis, and the first under the leadership of the newly appointed Editorial Board and Editor in Chief, Prof. Dr Tereza Scheiner. Entitled Key ideas in museums and heritage, the issue presents a series of emblematic articles previously published in Museum International over the years.

ICOM members can access this issue free-of-charge on their ICOMMUNITY page:http://icommunity.icom.museum/en/content/ museum-international

For further queries, please contact:publications@icom.museum

CASE STUDY MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

The plain beyond the plainThis project was designed to encourage a sense of involvement in primary and lower secondary students with regard to the cultural and environmental heritage of the region, looking at the subject of the transformations which the Padan Plain – better known as the Po Basin – has been subjected to over time: from a marine to a glacial environment, to the human-made alterations throughout history, from Roman times until today. Environmental reconstructions have been created using conventional as well as multimedia formats, interactive computer games and large-scale jigsaw puzzles related to the landscapes during the different periods examined, particularly the Pliocene (with a depiction of the marine environment when the plain was under the waters of the Adriatic Sea), the Pleistocene (the frozen plain that was home to mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses and other alpine animals), the Roman period (the land divided through the process of centuriation) and our contemporary age (aerial

photographs of cities). These activities have been reinforced by a teacher resource publication to be read as an introduction to the visit. The initiatives are some of the educational ideas put forward by the Natural History Museum of Cremona, which is part of the Museum

Network of Cremona, in collaboration with the city’s Archaeological Museum. They have emerged in the framework of the Science and Technology Education (EST) project, which is sponsored by the Cariplo Foundation together with the Regional Education Department of Lombardy, the Region of Lombardy, the National Museum of Science and Technology Foundation and the Natural History Museum of Milan. ■

Museum Network of Cremona: http://www.progettoest.it/tycoon/light/viewPage/ProgettoEst/hide_cremona_museostorianatEST project website: http://musei.comune.cremona.it/PostCE-display-ceid-12.phtml

The Port Museum of TricaseThe Port of Tricase is a large and dynamic ‘Port Museum’ – not a museum about the port. It is a place to research, gather, exchange and further knowledge on the traditions of the sea and the coast, embracing the landscape of culture and the culture of landscape. Embarking on a course of rediscovery into its cultural, historical and natural values and its relationship with the peoples of the Mediterranean, it has set in motion a process of sustainable and responsible development for the economic and social advancement of its community.

It is a place that offers a wealth of learning opportunities, including courses on ancient seafaring, courses for marine tour operators and an introduction to the sea-inspired cuisine of the Salento region. Workshops and practical experiences are also organised: Cantieri del Gusto (Shipyards of Flavours), i Racconti del Focone (Tales from the Galley), Tramare (Weaving) and more. Its Multimedia Library of the Sea houses a collection of oral traditions, objects, books and photographs.

The museum has involved the community in order to revive a dormant identity and turn it into the motor of its own economic and social development, investing in its own values, history and culture. It is a safe haven of sorts, a welcoming place for meeting and for sharing the experiences of the communities and coastal regions of the Mediterranean.

This is a project of the Magna Grecia Mare Association in collaboration with the Centro Culturale sulle Tradizioni Marinaresche (Cultural Centre for Seafarers’ Traditions), the Museo delle Imbarcazioni Tradizionali (Museum of Traditional Boats), the Scuola di Antica Marineria (School of Ancient Seafaring), the Cantiere del Gusto (Shipyards of Flavours), the Bibliomediateca (Multimedia Library of the Sea) and the Mediterranean Observatory for Research on Marine and Coastal Biodiversity. ■

Magna Grecia Mare Association: http://www.magnagreciamare.it

The gentle hills and stairways of NaplesWe are used to thinking of Naples as a city on the sea with Mount Vesuvius just beyond, but this is not the case. The typical postcard of Naples showing Mount Vesuvius is what can be seen from Naples, but it is not Naples, because Vesuvius is separated from the city by some ten municipalities. The true image of the city of Naples is that offered by Tavola Strozzi, a painting dating from the second half of the 15th century that depicts the hills of Vomero, Capodimonte and Camaldoli: a great metropolitan environmental reserve, the city’s lungs and a treasure trove of history and local traditions, which, since 2004, is also Metropolitan Park. Stairways, ramps and terraces have been and are still the intelligent way for getting from the top to the bottom, from one neighbourhood to another; for thinking, listening, breathing, and for saving time and fuel.

In 2011, to mark the Puliamo il Mondo (Clean up the World) campaign by the environmentalist association Legambiente (League for the Environment), the Organisation for the Restoration of Naples’s Stairways was created on the Principessa Jolanda Stairs. It campaigns for people to get to know the stairways, to safeguard the stairways for their cultural value, and use them as a resource for tourism; and aims to foster a new urban mobility, a new lifestyle in Naples, wherein walking, slowing down and lingering replace hurrying around.

This is a project of the Legambiente Neapolis 2000 club and the Organisation for the Restoration of Naples’s Stairways, which is attempting to create a ‘stair map’, as well as intermodal interchange between public transport and the stairways (bus/metro/stairways), and to promote the most significant stairways in the city. ■

Scale di Napoli: http://www.scaledinapoli.comVisit Capodimonte: www.visitcapodimonte.com

Educational activities at the Natural History Museum of Cremona

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The journal for museum scholars and professionals worldwide

Published since 1948, Museum International is an important and influential academic journal for museum scholars and professionals in a variety of disciplines. In 2013, UNESCO transferred the journal to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and it is now published by ICOM in partnership with the existing co-publisher, Wiley.

This present issue of Museum International is the third to be published under ICOM’s aegis, and the first under the leadership of the newly appointed Editorial Board and Editor in Chief, Prof. Dr Tereza Scheiner. Entitled Key ideas in museums and heritage, the issue presents a series of emblematic articles previously published in Museum International over the years.

ICOM members can access this issue free-of-charge on their ICOMMUNITY page:http://icommunity.icom.museum/en/content/ museum-international

For further queries, please contact:publications@icom.museum

The family of museums of natural and human sciences has been at the heart of the development of the

sciences in Europe and has contributed to our understanding of the dynamic phenomena behind permanent changes to the living world and human societies. In 1809, Lamarck described in Philosophie Zoologique how they had contributed to the new concept of science. He wrote that the idea that species do not evolve ‘is refuted every day in the eyes’ of those ‘who have successful ly consulted the great and rich collections of our museums.’ In the following decades, these museums helped shape new disciplines such as palaeontology, anthropology, ethnology and more, thereby participating in the split between the natural and human sciences. The two fields, which until that time had been developed jointly within museums, should now come together again to address the current societal issues of humankind’s relationship to nature and our complex position within the living world.

With the emergence of new disciplines and their specialisation, this family of

museums began to focus on inventorying the diversity of nature and human societies, but in the latter half of the 20th century, some scientists within these new disciplines began to question the purpose of museum collections and exhibitions. Natural history and ethnological museums worldwide experienced a crisis that led to the loss of

f inancia l suppor t a l o n g w i t h t h e c losing of publ ic exhibitions and, for some ethnological museums, a retreat to aestheticism and sectarianism.

It was only in the late 20th century that certain science museums started to reaffirm the modernity of their collections through the creation of new museums or extensive renovations of existing ones. The collections in these new museums reflected previous states of the natural world and societies, making it possible to analyse how they have been transformed and, for example, to document humankind’s responsibility for the extinction of many wildlife species.

Museums of natural and human sciences no longer need to justify the purpose of their collections in their public exhibitions. Now

they face a second major challenge, that of defining their role in social debate and their responsibility to sound the alarm in the face of the current global environmental crisis.

Roles and responsibilitiesThe increase in disastrous weather events has helped raise awareness of global environmental changes and their relationship to human activity. However, despite a growing number of warnings about the consequences these changes will have on human beings’ health and living conditions, denial and reckless abandon still persist, hindering the development of a collective approach to prevention, as seen by the limits of the COP 21 conference (21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

The changes that societ ies must make wil l require greater sharing of available information, information which museums, and particularly natural science, archaeological and anthropological museums, hold in their collections. This calls for going beyond disciplinary approaches, which, for museums, means questioning the typologies of collections; it also requires combining scientific approaches with societal questions, both to answer those questions, and to identify issues to which societies should be alerted.

This role of sounding the alarm is central, bringing museums of natural and human sciences together once again, both in terms of subject matter but also in terms of professional ethics. The question now is: can an exhibition go beyond presenting a consensus to create a forum for debating conflicting points of view?

That is what we chose to do in designing our museum’s Gallery of Evolution in the late 1980s, by dedicating several hundred square metres to presenting a number of specimens of wildlife species that had recently gone extinct or were endangered due to pressure from human societies, at a time when there was no consensus regarding the loss of biodiversity among either scientists or the authorities.

To d ay, i n te r p re t i n g t h e g l o b a l environmental crisis has given rise to even

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IN FOCUS MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

Museums sounding the alarmChallenges for museums of natural and human sciences

in the face of the global environmental crisisby Michel Van-Praët, Professor Emeritus, National Museum of Natural History, Paris

The changes that societies must make will require greater

sharing of available information, information which museums hold

in their collections

View of the permanent exhibition at the new Musée de l’Homme, Paris

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Where are we going?Considering environmental issues in developing the new Musée de l’Hommeby Cécile Aufaure, Chief Curator and Renovation Project Manager, Musée de l’Homme, Paris

On 17 October, 2015, after a six-year closure for renovations, the Musée de l’Homme opened its doors to

the public with a renewed scientific and cultural mission. The Galerie de l’Homme (gallery of humankind), the museum’s permanent exhibition, asks three major questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? After redefining the position of humankind in the living world, the gallery tells the public the story of human evolution in a way that portrays both the origins of humankind and its future. In the gallery, significant space is given to humankind’s new relationship to the biosphere, which began 10,000 years ago. Ownership and domestication of natural resources by humans in the Neolithic age can be considered the first milestone in the Anthropocene era. This system still shapes the majority of relationships between humankind and nature, while the accelerated anthropisation of the planet since the Industrial Revolution, especially since the 1950s, has been more of a change of scale than a paradigm shift.

By highlighting the inextricable links between humankind and the environment in all of its exhibitions, the new Musée de l’Homme has chosen to use scientific

environmental data to explore the future of human societies.

These questions, which are dif ficult to address using only objects in the col lect ion, are discussed in a vast mult imedia instal lat ion designed by the agency Zen+dCo, highlighting the growing acceleration of all natural resource consumption indicators since the 1950s. Factual data and figures are presented in a circular structure nine metres in diameter, which surrounds visitors and immerses them in the issue so they can understand the impacts of human activities on the biosphere and their consequences through a sensorial and intellectual experience.

The installation explores five themes: water, f ishery products, wood, waste and fossil fuels. For each theme, a one-minute animation provides an immersive visual introduction, followed by global consumption f igures and graphs for the past 50 years, major global trends (where supplies are, who exploits them, who consumes them, etc.), including relationships between nations and between major areas of influence, examples of local consequences and a brief presentation of currently available alternatives.

In addition to the factual data, interviews

with ecologist Gilles Bœuf, agronomist Marion Guillou, demographer Hervé Le Bras and anthropologist Frédérique Chlous provide a summary of scientists’ views on the subject of living together on a planet with limited resources.

Nearby, a display case of everyday items connects these major concepts to specific examples that show both the reality of these impacts and how different lifestyles can affect them. Five portraits are presented: of a photographer living in Paris, a Sami herder in Sweden, a Pygmy woman in Gabon, a Siwa Oasis farmer in Egypt, and a shopkeeper in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Finally, in this laboratory/museum housing several multidisciplinary research teams exploring the links between humans and their environment over the course of evolution, the public is not only engaged through museum exhibitions. Discussions, meetings, conferences and film screenings on global warming and the Anthropocene era scheduled for November 2015, in conjunction with the COP 21 conference, are just some of the activities offered by the museum to promote understanding and public awareness of these issues.

more questions of professional practice during exhibitions on topics as varied as demographics, the diversity and unity of humanity and its place in the living world.

Shifting paradigmsA topic as seemingly uncontroversial as the Neolithic age, which could be presented by museums of anthropology, Egyptology, the history of civilisations or ceramics, illustrates the questions of professional ethics that should be asked when designing exhibitions around topics as traditional as ‘Where do we come from?’, ‘Who are we?’ and ‘Where are we going?’, as was the case when the Musée de l’Homme reopened in October 2015 (see boxed text).

For 10,000 years, Neolithisation has corresponded to the domestication of plant and animal species that remain essential

to feeding humanity, to the modifying of land for agriculture and to the processes of creating settlements that have led to today’s mass urbanisation movement. Over thousands of years, Neolithisation has helped shape the current notions of well-being and progress. In every society, those notions have been associated with a controlled use of the immediate environment based on a variety of cultural practices which, thanks to the growth of knowledge, have made an increasingly effective use of natural resources possible, without considering – until very recently – the overall limitations of the planet, as the world’s population has grown from a few million to several billion people. In most societies, well-being is therefore associated with a feeling of controlling nature, or at least its resources. This has contributed to today’s

positive image of engineering and the view that it can compensate for the changes that have been made, protect the environment and repair the damage done by humans.

Breaking with this thousands-year-old paradigm and emerging from what could be considered a late Neolithic age, without suggesting that humanity is condemned to regression, will require reorienting science, technology and, more generally, humankind’s creativity from controlling nature to evolving along with it.

Faced with the need to change the perception of the position of humans in the living world and, more generally, humankind’s relat ionship to nature, museums have the enormous social responsibi l i t y of re interpret ing and enhancing their collections. ■

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10 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

SPECIAL REPORT MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

10 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

Community means speaking the same language: being able to recognise and understand the ways in which others think differently; enriching our vision with what is presented to us through common words – from the simplest to the most complex –

which, although apparently the same, take on different meanings in other cultural contexts.

With a view to the wider international ICOM community, it is therefore necessary to establish an agreement on some of the key words for the forthcoming 2016 General Conference in Milan, in order to be able to use them with both their common and shared meaning, as well as with the different values they have been attri-buted across continents, countries and settings. These terms are primarily landscape, but also territory and cultural heritage – and even museum.

In order to understand one another, we can refer to some of the definitions found in international documents, even in some very recent ones, so that we can begin to deal with them and

establish whether they are able to serve as a common basis for the emergence of the many other meanings that exist in this – fortunately – very diverse world of ours. We will analyse the terms landscape, territory, heritage and museum in pairs, in something like a game of dominoes.

Territory and landscapeTerritory and landscape are not the same thing, even if in common usage they tend to be considered synonyms. Territory is the physical and material dimension of the landscape, with its characteristic natural and/or anthropic features. Landscape is not merely the image of a territory, even if the term has long been and continues to be used to refer to a painting, drawing or photographic representation.

During the 20th century, the term landscape progressively lost both the aesthetic value attributed to it (by which a landscape could only be a beautiful, picture-postcard landscape) and the value of being applied more particularly to a natural environment. Today,

Common groundGrappling with the key terms of Milano 2016by Daniele Jalla, Professor of Museology, University of Perugia; Chair of ICOM Italy

Wadi Rum, Jordan

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while not the case in common usage, the term has taken on a neutral value in scientific and political circles, both in the definition given by UNESCO1 and that of the European Landscape Convention2.

In both cases, the term landscape ‘refers both to a way of viewing the environment surrounding us and to this environment itself’, and ‘the appeal of the idea of landscape is that it unifies the factors at work in our relationship with the surrounding environment’3.

In this view, landscapes, ‘whether of aesthetic value or not, provide the setting for our daily lives; they are familiar and the concept of landscape links people to nature, recog-nising their interaction with the environment’4.

This is the notion of land-scape that we will have to tackle in Milan, because it emerges

from an international perspective and guides actions for protection, safeguarding and enhancement around the world.

Landscape and cultural heritageIt is evident that landscape and cultural heritage are not identical: even if everything were landscape, as we have seen, some landscapes would not be worthy of being passed on. In fact, in comparing landscapes, we have the duty to exercise our constructive criticism and to reflect on how to transform them. However, it is particularly true that ‘landscape […] is how we perceive the present world, heritage is how we perceive and understand the past and all that it has bequeathed to us’5.

Landscape is the present; as such, we perceive it is as the setting in which we are immersed. On a daily basis, it challenges our intelligence and our sensitivity to recognise what and how much of it – as a reflection and expression of the values, beliefs, knowledge and traditions that belong to us – deserves to be protected and enhanced by present generations for transmission

to future generations6, because we identify it as a resource for sustainable development.

Cultural heritage and museumsThe definition of cultural heritage given in the UNESCO Recommendation represents an innovation because it entrusts people with the task of choosing and deciding, ‘independently of ownership’, what cultural heritage is. And even if the Recommendation does not make it clear, the role of the museum becomes that of inter-preter for heritage communities, placing its own competences and knowledge, spaces and resources at their service. This is a new and still undefined task, but one arising from the vision of landscape and cultural heritage that is emerging on an international level.

In an increasingly globalised world, and one grappling with phenomena that appear as threats to the existence and future of humanity, if cultural heritage is viewed as a fundamental resource for building a sustainable future, and if it is a right of populations to define the nature of their heritage and protect its diversity, then museums – which, by definition, operate ‘in the service of society and of its development’ – must adapt to the duties and responsibilities that this entails. They cannot simply convey heritage received, but must also seek, outside of themselves, what is worthy of protecting, conserving and safeguarding – what, in expressing ‘identities, beliefs, knowledge and traditions’, is a resource for the future.

Their scope broadens to encompass the cultural landscape (of which the cultural heritage already identified is only a part),

combining a ‘museum-oriented’ and a ‘context-oriented’ approach, as complementary aspects of museum action. This action extends out into the territory, involving the community not only in terms of knowledge, conservation and promotion, but also in identifying and interpreting its own needs, expectations, ideas and proposals.

If, as we wrote in the Siena Charter7, the cultural landscape is ‘the country where we live, which surrounds us with the images and

symbols that identify and characterise it’; if it is ‘the setting for our daily life’, a set of places that are ‘familiar’ to us; if it is an inextricable combination of past and present, with all of their contradictions and conflicts, incessantly calling upon us to choose what is worth saving, what can or must be changed or innovated; if all of this is true, then the ICOM General Conference to be held in Milan in 2016 must be the occasion for setting out the ways in which museums of the third millennium are to respond to the challenges that they are facing regarding the new visions of cultural landscape and cultural heritage that are being imposed on an international level. ■

Museums cannot simply convey heritage received,

but must also seek, outside of themselves,

what is worthy of protecting, conserving and safeguarding as a resource for the future

Notes1 http://whc.unesco.org/en/culturallandscape2 http://www.coe.int/en/web/landscape/about-the-convention3 Nora Mitchell, Mechtild Rössler, Pierre-Marie Tricaud (Authors/Ed.), World Heritage Cultural Landscapes. A Handbook for Conservation and Management, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2009.

Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/documents/publi_wh_papers_26_en.pdf4 Ibid.5 G. Fairclough, New Heritage Frontiers, in Council of Europe, Heritage and Beyond, Strasbourg, Council of Europe Publishing, 2009, p. 31. Available at: https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/heritage/identities/PatrimoineBD_en.pdf6 This sentence reproduces, in a different order and with some gaps, the definition of heritage included in the UNESCO Recommendation on the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, their Diversity and their Role in Society,

adopted on 17 November, 2015: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/museums/recommendation-on-the-protection-and-promotion-of-museums-and-collections/ The definition partially reflects that of the Faro Convention of 2005: http://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/treaty/199

7 http://icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/News/Carta_di_Siena_EN_final.pdf

12 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015 12 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

SPECIAL REPORT MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

Homewood Museum sits at the hear t of the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) campus in

Baltimore, Maryland (US) and lends its distinctive early 19th century form to the surrounding architecture. Until recently, however, it was functionally isolated from the university’s mission and its deep, historical relationship to the campus grounds. New academic projects focused on that relationship, most notably courses offered through JHU’s Program in Museums and Society, are helping to uncover histories that had nearly been forgotten – including the presence of enslaved African-Americans who once worked the house and land. Through its increased engagement with faculty and students, Homewood Museum is

becoming a key resource for uncovering and sharing complex and sometimes contested histories with the broader public.

Homewood, the site of the Homewood Museum, was a country retreat for the influ-ential Carroll family, known for producing the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. Built between 1801 and 1808, it is a landmark example of Federal architecture. The Carrolls sold the house and its grounds in 1839, and in 1902 the property was given to JHU. The univer-sity campus – a handsome brick matrix with elegant columns and pediments – responds direct ly to Homewood’s architecture.

In 1987, Hopkins restored and opened Homewood as a historic house museum dedicated to life in early 19th century

Maryland. Since then, its staff has increas-ingly focused on tying the museum to the core activities of the university. These include hosting and offering courses devoted to the house, its contents, and the lives of the Carrolls and their contemporaries.

Beyond museum wallsIn the spring of 2014, one of these courses spilled out from the house to consider the surrounding landscape. Led by Beth Maloney, Lecturer in Museums and Society and independent museum educator, with assistance from museum and library staff, ten students researched sites across campus in order to present a fuller picture of the place they currently call home. Each student selected archival images and wrote

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A sense of place Rethinking a bucolic landscapeby Elizabeth Rodini, founding Director, Program in Museums and Society, Johns Hopkins University, US

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the narrative for a historical signpost. The class studied how people experience inter-pretive text in informal settings and worked with an environmental design class at the Maryland Institute College of Art to produce signage that was erected for the opening of the 2014-15 academic year1. The signs were so well received that the university adminis-tration funded the production of new signs after the first set – intended to last only one year – began to wear out (the original signs and the course were funded by a grant to Museums and Society from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.)

The sign that has garnered the most attention discusses former slave quarters that once occupied a corner of land that is now part of the JHU campus. The structure had been absorbed into a larger domestic building, neither of which is still standing. This was one of the things that drew student Courtney Little to the project. Little, now completing a graduate degree in public history, took on the challenge of interpreting what she calls a ‘contentious, absent historic site’. Her sign featured a reproduc-tion of a Carroll probate inventory listing the ‘property’ they held in 1839, including 16 men, women and children.

T h a t e n s l a v e d people lived on and worked this land is no surprise: Maryland, which sits just below the Mason-Dixon line dividing North from South, was a slave state, and as wealthy land-holders, the Carrolls owned many slaves. Yet the paucity of material remains leads us to forget this history, allowing a nostalgic landscape of gentle hills and neat architecture to assert itself instead. A recent replanting of Homewood’s historic orchard adjacent to the house, for example, is a scenic reimagining of the past that speaks of lost beauty – but not, evidently, of the labour that produced it.

Past as presentEveryone involved in the signage project agreed that it was important to directly

address the fact of slavery at Homewood and to do this assertively, accurately and sensitively. The class embarked on lengthy discussions and testing of the signage with various audiences including faculty, staff and administrators, fellow students, passers-by, and members of several campus multi-cultural groups.

The ten signposts that resulted are a call to remember by infusing the landscape with lost stories, most of which are celebra-tory or honorific. But not the slavery sign: it is intended to stop people in their tracks and get them to take

a second look at the place that surrounds them. This happens, even in the bustle of daily campus life, and is given a boost by faculty members such as anthropolo-gist Anand Pandian, who uses it to help students think more carefully about the spaces they inhabit and the freedoms they enjoy. ‘It [is] as though another layer of history [has] surfaced onto the landscape of the campus,’ he says.

The signage programme has begun to shape museum programming as well. Two students were inspired to write and produce a theatrical interpretation of domestic life at Homewood that gives voice to William, an enslaved worker on the Carroll estate.

They see living history as a way to present stories that have gone missing, much like the slave quarters themselves. And in April 2015, the museum organised a symposium on slavery in Maryland that attracted a large and varied audience from across the city.

Only days later, Baltimore erupted in protests and unrest over the death of Freddie Gray, an unarmed black man, while in police custody. In this context, the Homewood slavery sign emerged not only as a reminder of the past, but as a way of insisting on the continued impact of the past on the present. Just as the gracious campus landscape allows us to forget the racial injustices that mark its historic grounds, so the sign binds the past to the present, compelling us to remember. Or, as JHU President Ronald J. Daniels put it in a letter of appreciation, the signs ‘weave the history of the Homewood campus into the fabric of our daily lives.’

Johns Hopkins – as the dominant insti-tution in a socially challenged city and a university intent on improving the human condition – has an obligation to tell our most painful narratives and seek their ongoing relevance. Homewood Museum is integral to this work. Its historical connection to the land, central place on campus, and ability to bridge academic and civic concerns make it a fitting steward for the stories of William and the other enslaved workers of the Carroll estate. ■

Homewood Museum is becoming a key resource

for uncovering and sharing complex and sometimes contested histories with

the broader public

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Note1 See: http://retrospective.jhu.edu/our-initiatives/hidden-stories-of-homewood

14 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

Azulejo awarenessSPECIAL REPORT MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

14 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

Portuguese historic and artistic ceramic tiles stand out in the world cultural heritage for their invaluable

richness in quality, quantity, style, materials and techniques. Portuguese architecture is known worldwide for its azulejos, which cover the exterior and interior walls of countless Portuguese buildings, from convents, churches and palaces to hospi-tals, railway stations, schools, all sorts of public buildings and entire urban private housing blocks.

Because azulejos are increasingly valued by art experts, historians and international antique dealers, they are increasingly victim to art and antiques burglary and trafficking – and the number of thef ts rose accordingly in recent decades, peaking in the early 2000s,

especially in the Lisbon area. Curiously – and paradoxically – enough,

apart from some notable exceptions, urban azulejos do not seem to be highly valued by average Portuguese citizens and institutions. These tiles have been so omnipresent in everyday Portuguese life for so many centuries that few people notice or particularly care about them. The result is neglect, needless removal of these tiles from walls, demolitions of tile-covered buildings, vandalism and countless tiled constructions badly in need of conserva-tion measures.

The emergence of SOS AzulejoIn 2007 the Portuguese Judiciary Police Museum (JPM) created the SOS Azulejo Project in response to the aforementioned

problems of theft and neglect, and also driven by institutional and practical circum-stances. Firstly, the Portuguese Judiciary Police is the law enforcement agency with exclusive competence for crimes related to cultural heritage in the country; and secondly, the JPM possesses a collec-tion of stolen historic tiles recovered by the police but still of unknown origin. This collection has been exhibited on several occasions by the JPM for educational purposes. Linked to these educational purposes is the fact that the JPM defined its mission as crime prevention, as this constitutes one of the explicit competences of the Judiciary Police and is of direct interest and service to the community.

In this context, SOS Azulejo was born as a crime prevention project to protect

Towards the protection of a unique Portuguese cultural landscapeby Leonor Sá, SOS Azulejo coordinator, Museu de Polícia Judiciária/Escola de Polícia Judiciária

‘Tiles in Lisbon’ by David D

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Traditional tiled façade, Lisbon

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Por tuguese azulejos from growing theft, traffic and vandalism, but involved two additional objectives: preventive conservation and raising awareness of the value of Portuguese historic tiles. This interdisciplinary approach made partner-ships absolutely necessary. In 2007 the JPM signed protocols with a series of Portuguese organisations including bodies belonging to the former Ministry of Culture, universities, a local authorities association and other police forces.

SOS Azulejo has no budget and its functioning is flexible; each partner puts its specific skills to work within its respec-tive institutional budget. Occasionally sponsors are enlisted for actions that cannot be covered by the partners.

A triple focusThe primary focus of SOS Azulejo is on preventing and deterring thefts. The first visible SOS Azulejo action towards this goal consisted in disseminating systema-tised information and images of stolen figurative azulejos through its website, www.sosazulejo.com, as well as on the project’s Facebook page. Easy access to these images is intended to facilitate iden t i f i c a t i on and recover y of sto len historic t i les; make their circulation on the market difficult; and deter this type of crime amongst burglars and fences.

Prior to the existence of SOS Azulejo, figurative stolen azulejos circulated easily on the market, in art circuits and even state museums, but the project has completely changed the situation. Good faith buyers – whether antique dealers, curators or other professionals – now have easily available information concerning stolen figurative tiles, and buyers in bad faith can no longer claim ignorance.

The results of this measure were immediate and encouraging. The day following the launch of the website, a tile panel by Leopoldo Battistini dating to the early 20th century, stolen from Palácio da

Rosa in Lisbon in 2001, was recognised and recovered.

In the longer term, statistics concerning registered thefts of azulejos have also been highly encouraging and demon-strate impressive measurable results, with a dramatic decrease in registered stolen azulejos since 2007, the year that SOS

Azulejo was created.The second focus

of SOS Azulejo is on preventing the neglect and destruction of the azulejos. This entailed raising the awareness of the local municipal

authority of Lisbon (CML), which created a concrete municipal plan for the protection of Lisbon’s azulejos in 2010; and proposing important measures to be incorporated in the CML’s new urban planning regula-tions, prohibiting the demolition of tiled building façades and the removal of azulejos from the same façades. The acceptance of this proposal repre-sented a radical reversal in the protection approach for Portuguese tile heritage.

Once this new regulation was put into effect in April 2013, SOS Azulejo proposed its implementation in all Portuguese cities, in the name of the global protection of this heritage. While

this is not yet a reality, it would also be a solid basis to propose Portuguese azulejos for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Lastly, departing from a focus on negative information – theft, vandalism, degradation – SOS Azulejo sought to enlarge its scope of action by adding a positive perspective, disseminating and rewarding good practices. In this frame-work, it recognises academic studies, artistic and community actions: the SOS Azulejo Awards were created in 2010 and are held annually in May at the Palácio Fronteira in Lisbon, given to individuals and institutions whose remarkable work contributes not only to the safeguarding of azulejos, but also to their study, dissemi-nation, enhancement and continuity in contemporary art. Additionally, every year in May, SOS Azulejo School Action is held with the participation of schools on a nationwide level, involving thousands of students, teachers, parents and senior citizens in various playful activities geared for learning about azulejos. It is hoped that in the near future, this will become a National Day of Azulejos.

The hopes that led to the creation of SOS Azulejo have translated into impressive concrete results. In 2013, the project’s fruitful efforts were recognised by the Grand Prix of the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Award. We are confident that the unique cultural landscape of azulejos in Portugal will prevail. ■

There has been a dramatic decrease in registered

stolen azulejos since 2007, the year that SOS Azulejo

was created

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SOS Azulejo School Action in Marvão, Portalegre, 6 May, 2015

Schoolchildren participating in SOS Azulejo School Action in Beja, Alentejo, 6 May, 2015

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SPECIAL REPORT MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

Reinvigorating a remote hilltopSPECIAL REPORT MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

16 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

M igration has been a major issue for Turkey since the 1960s, notably in the country’s eastern provinces.

Populations move towards the industrialised cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, as well as European countries such as Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Belgium, driven by fear for their future and the quest for a better life, a good education system, employment opportunities and a stable healthcare system. Migration has adverse effects on women and children, primarily, due to their vulnerability.

Bayburt, the smallest province in Turkey, counts high levels of migration. While some migrants have retained a connection to their native region, albeit limited, a significant

portion of the population has left not to return, seeking out work as seasonal agricul-tural labourers. Bayraktar is the smallest village in the province, located in a remote mountainous region that has lost much of its population to migration. Its ancient name is Baksı, or ‘shaman’, and in recent years, it has become known as home to a museum project that is reinvigorating the local commu-nity and triggering reverse migration.

The Baksı storyThe Baksı Museum was the brainchild of Hüsamettin Koçan, an Istanbul-based artist who was born in Bayraktar. Koçan’s father left the village to work when Hüsamettin

was very young, returning home only once every two years. Koçan would eagerly await his father’s return throughout his childhood, subsequently moving to Istanbul to become a renowned artist and later, Dean of Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty. Many years on, when his father passed away, he returned home to the village to pay his respects – and started planning for a project to house the works of local artisans.

Hüsamettin Koçan originally wanted to transform an old mansion in the village into a cultural centre, but faced with substantial bureaucratic obstacles, he decided instead to build a new museum from scratch. The preparations for the Baksı Museum started

The cultural landscapes of the Baksı Museumby Feride Celik, Director, Baksı Museum, Turkey

The Baksı Museum, Bayburt Province, Turkey

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in 2000, and it took five years for the building to be completed. The museum sits atop a hill where Hüsamettin Koçan used to await his father’s return, and houses a contemporary art collection in addition to a large collection of traditional works including Ottoman calli-graphy, under-glass paintings, healing bowls and kilims (rugs).

The museum is driven by the themes of migration, women, children and cultural sustainability. Koçan always thought that he suffered the most as a child growing up separated from his father, but later realised that his mother had gone through extremely difficult times raising him and his seven siblings on her own.

The region’s limited resources are cause for continuous migration. The museum was established to remind local people of their cultural roots, aiming to support them in building a sustainable life with the knowledge and experience they are able to glean here. The Baksı Museum project thus strives to establish an economic foundation in order to prevent further migration.

Empowering local women and childrenAn important part of the plan was to develop textile workshops for women from Bayraktar and neighbouring villages, empowering them as economic actors in the region. These workshops, which combine traditional and contemporary crafts, furthermore allow for cultural heritage to be transmitted and new forms of contact to occur. The museum creates a space for communication and inter-action that bridges the gap between centre and periphery, making art and design oppor-tunities accessible to more marginalised populations.

The local women produce ehram, a textile that was traditionally handwoven locally for daily use. Original ehram is a coarse fabric, and its production is a lengthy procedure. This traditional textile now reaches contemporary Turkish fashion designers in Istanbul, who transform it into modern ready-to-wear cloth

incorporating cotton and silk to make it softer. These days, ehram is used for products ranging from shoes to backpacks, pencil cases and hats. The women from the village work in the museum’s textile workshops and are involved in this contemporary produc-tion, for which they are paid via a debit

card allowing them to withdraw money depos-ited into individual bank accounts. In addition to weaving workshops, the museum organises ceramic and modern kilim workshops. The l oc a l women and children collect indig-enous plants f rom the surrounding hills

to produce local natural dyes used in the process.

The museum also places a great deal of importance on the wellbeing of children, and has established an annual art festival for local students, which includes an art competition for students from schools in the region. The Baksı Culture and Art Foundation grants scholarships to 15 students every year for

their art studies, which fund the students through graduation from university.

In addition to the art festival, the museum hosts community involvement projects orga-nised by different schools. Robert College, an American high school in Istanbul, sends a group of students to the Baksı Museum every summer to collaborate with local children on various scientific and recreational activi-ties, including art, music, drama and sports classes. These two groups of children from contrasting social backgrounds benefit from each other in remarkable fashion.

The museum also runs guesthouses, aimed to promote cultural tourism as well as sustainable modes of development for the region – notably by providing employment opportunities for local villagers.

The Baksı Museum combines the spectacular natural beauty of north-eastern Anatolia with traditional and local as well as modern art in a unique space for cultural inter-action. In recognition of its accomplishments, it received the Council of Europe Museum Prize in 2014. The Baksı Museum is drawing visitors to a remote Anatolian hilltop through the hope that it creates and the energy that it provides for its surrounding community. ■

The Baksı Museum was established to remind

local people of their cultural roots, aiming to support them in building a sustainable life with the knowledge and experience

gleaned here

The processing and weaving of ehram textile by local woman

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18 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

Out of the woodInteractions between the Kizhi Museum and its local communityby Olga Titova, Deputy Director for Development and International Relations, Kizhi Museum, Russia

T he Kizhi Museum is the largest open-air museum in Russia. On Kizhi Island in Lake Onega, Republic of Karelia, excellent examples of rural architecture, including historic

farmhouses and other buildings brought from different regions of Karelia, demonstrate the art of carpentry and everyday peasant life in the 19th century. The gem of the Kizhi Museum collection is the architectural ensemble of the Kizhi Pogost, which, with its two wooden churches and bell tower, was one of the first Russian sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, in 1990. Back then, experts noted that the ‘perfectly proportioned wooden structures are also in perfect harmony with the surrounding landscape’.

Currently, the landscape presents one of the few examples of a holistic architectural ensemble with well-preserved farming

buildings and the traditional dominant feature – the church ensemble, which is the compositional and conceptual centre of the whole area.

An integrated approach Effective conservation of cultural heritage implies a comprehensive approach. Heritage conservation is considered in close connection with the surrounding landscape, as well as the intangible cultural heritage, social, economic and cultural life of the region. It also involves the widest possible participation of the local community in terms of preservation, use and enhancement of the cultural heritage.

The objective of this comprehensive approach is not ‘conserva-tion for the sake of conservation’, but adaptation of the heritage

The Kizhi Pogost architectural ensemble on Kizhi Island, Republic of Karelia, Russia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site©

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to modern ways of life, its use for the sustainable development of the area and improvement of the quality of life of local communities.

The local community of the Kizhi Archipelago and its surrounding region of Zaonezhie, which created the unique monument of wooden architecture on Kizhi Island, is the primary custodian of this authentic culture, the bearer of historical and cultural traditions and knowledge, able to continue the pursuit of traditional crafts and oversee the management of natural resources. Taking into consideration the wealth of the cultural heritage and the beauty of the nature of the area, one of the few options for its development lies in the development of various forms of cultural and ecological tourism. Kizhi Museum works closely with the local community in elabo-rating programmes and services for tourists.

Picturesque chapels have been preserved in the area around Kizhi Island in historical villages. A long tradition of celebrating chapel feasts has been revived with the museum’s support: festive church services are held in the chapels, the bells are sounded and people sing traditional songs from the north of Russia. Specialists from the museum staff are helping the local people bring back traditional crafts. The products of the local craftspeople are sold at fairs, and kizhankas, or traditional boats, are used for navigating around the islands of the Kizhi Archipelago. The museum also seeks to raise awareness among local residents on environmental issues, including proper waste management and protection of the natural island landscapes.

Techniques for tourismZaonezhie is a region that has conserved a singular atmosphere and spirit. The local people long preserved celebrated legends about Russian warrior heroes in

their memory, and Zaonezhie is frequently referred to as the ‘treasure of the Russian north’, or the ‘Iceland of Russian epics’. But in recent decades, this unique area had been abandoned and was on the decline.

An analysis of the situation demon-strated that the Kizhi Museum and local businesses shared certain problems –

namely, a generally short tourist stay (2-3 hours and only on Kizhi Island) and insufficient publicity for the region, despite the poten-tial to keep tourists occupied for several days. Consequently, development of the local community and improvement in the social and economic situation was all but impossible. Only by

combining efforts and resources could the obstacles be surmounted.

The project ProEthno: Museum techniques in guest tourism was thus developed to involve the local population in providing tourist services with the use of museum techniques. The main objective of the project was to create conditions for tourism development in Zaonezhie as the factor in the area’s sustainable develop-ment on the basis of long-term partnerships between the museum and local businesses.

In the process of implementing the project, the efforts of a broad range of stakeholders were consolidated, ranging from local businesses to NGOs, cultural and educational institutions and local admin-istration. The creation of a new network

of partners is one of the main outcomes of the project.

Guesthouse owners were not only interested in the project, but became active participants in its implementation. Information and guidance materials and tourist maps of the territory were prepared for them, and consultations for guesthouse owners were provided. We aimed to find a distinctive feature for every guest-house, using the potential of the area and its own history, so that they could stand out, be competitive and attractive in the tourist market. A number of ideas were proposed, some of which were implemented in guest- houses. For example, an exhibition opened in one guesthouse recounting the history of the owner’s family, including an ancestor who participated in the first restoration of the Church of the Transfiguration, while additionally, new routes were offered for tourists, and a programme entitled Encounter with a craftsperson was launched.

The project turned out to be exception-ally timely and significant. It triggered a chain reaction of multiple important processes and projects which, in turn, provided sustainable and further development of ideas for dynamising the area’s tourism. The local population became interested and involved in the development of their community. The traditional system of local governance (gathering of village heads) was furthermore revived. Following the historical tradition, the village heads gather together in the refectory of the Church of the Intercession to solve common problems. Nowadays, the development of interaction with local residents has become one of the priorities of the Kizhi Museum. ■

A comprehensive approach to cultural heritage preservation

seeks adaptation of the heritage to modern ways

of life, its use for the sustainable development

of the area and improvement of the

quality of life of local communities

The programme Encounter with a craftsperson allows visitors to not only observe the work of local craftspeople, but to try the ancient crafts themselves

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Collaborative landscapesSPECIAL REPORT MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

O n 7 July, 2014, the ICOM Italian National Commit tee issued the Siena Charter, a document

dedicated to the relationship between museums and cultural landscapes. The primary aim of this short text was to discuss the central theme of the 24th ICOM General Conference, to be held in Milan in July 2016. In addition to resonating within the museum community as a whole, the thoughts expressed in the document also contained a political dimension firmly rooted in the ‘landscape’ of museums, and more gener-ally, in the heritage and culture of Italy. That is why, in the hope of immediately starting

a reflective dialogue on these issues with other national committees, the Italian National Committee contacted the French National Committee in the fall of 2014 to suggest that it look at these issues itself, and ask the same questions about its own landscape of museums and national heritage.

Responding favourably to this sugges-tion, ICOM France formed a working group and began to identify institutional situations that could be comparable to those in Italy, and which could be used specifically to examine the applicability of the changes being proposed by ICOM Italy. These

changes include providing support to museums in a given area so that they can create a central institution with the mission of promoting and interpreting heritage, in cooperation with other institutions, including archives and libraries.

Differing situationsThe proposal being made by ICOM Italy is of the utmost importance to our Italian colleagues, at a time when the Italian government is firmly engaged in a major managerial reform of its national museums, and every region’s heritage is suffering from a drastic reduction in resources, resulting

A working group formed by ICOM France to share experiences with Italian colleaguesby Louis-Jean Gachet, Honorary Heritage Curator General, member of ICOM France Executive Board

The Musée Savoisien in Chambéry, France

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in a radical overhaul of professional responsibilities in the field. This situation is what led the Italian National Committee to propose a complete reorganisation of regional heritage management, by making museums the promoters and coordinators of all technical and regulatory tasks in all institutions.

The situation in France, where museums and heritage are closely regulated by a strong government administration and a highly developed body of laws and regula-tions, does not correspond exactly to that of Italy. However, in a number of remark-able cases in France, museums have had to develop their own initiatives to become leaders of heritage in given areas – unfor-tunately, in most cases, for a limited period of time. There were two significant cases, for example, in the Alpine region: that of the Conservation du Patrimoine de l’Isère (Isère heritage conser-vation department), based in Grenoble at the Musée Dauphinois for a dozen years beginning in 1992, a particularly effec-tive, remarkable and integrated approach to managing the entire Isère department’s heritage; and that of the Musée Savoisien in Chambéry, founded in 1988 in connec-tion with the Albertville Olympic Games to promote and interpret Savoyard Baroque and fortified heritage. But other experiences on varying scales also show the capacity of certain French museums to develop this type of initiative and create the same kind of structure, despite the lack of national incentives providing backing or support. It should also be noted that the historic ecomuseum movement, in which France has been particularly exemplary, could be considered a paradigm of this approach in its own right.

Shaking up territoriesFrance’s heritage system, which is divided and corporatised to the extreme and

designed with the assumption of uninter-rupted growth in resources, does not currently offer the flexibility to easily permit this type of change or any type of radical experimentation in this direction. While France’s heritage in general does not face as alarming a situation as that described by our Italian colleagues, the gradual erosion of resources granted to those with responsibilities, and the need to highlight clearer, more effective issues, both for political and professional managers and for different audiences who use and benefit from heritage, demand attention. The imminent French regional reform could provide the opportunity to start a discussion on the possibility of region-alised heritage management, as well as

the ability to maintain (and even enhance) heritage in times of budget constraints; the interprofessional cooperative frame-work to be developed; and the pr iv i leged role certain museums could play. The issue of p romot ing and managing heri tage on a territorial level is not limited to regions. All other administra-

tive and political configurations, such as departments, cities, metropolitan areas and inter-communal bodies, would naturally be concerned.

The reflection being proposed by the Italian Committee is not, in itself, something new within ICOM, as its Chair, Daniele Jalla, rightfully states in his article ‘Museums and Context’1. It is part of a long movement towards a more overarching and integrated notion of museums and their societal incarnation, in line with their very historic essence.

The relevance of ICOM Italy’s proposal is clear, both strategically and museo-logically, and the working group that ICOM France has formed within its Board will likely continue to reflect on this long after the meeting in Milan. ■

While France’s heritage does not face as alarming

a situation as that described by our Italian colleagues, the gradual

erosion of resources granted to those with

responsibilities, and the need to highlight clearer,

more effective issues, demand attention

Note1 Daniele Jalla, 2015. Museums and Context in the History of ICOM (1946-2014): An Analysis in Preparation for the 24th General Conference of ICOM in 2016.

http://www.academia.edu/16082823/Musei_e_contesto_nella_storia_dell_ ICOM_1946-2014_una_prospettiva_di_analisi_in_preparazione_della_24a_ Conferenza_generale_del_2016

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22 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

Today, archaeological museums, especially in western Europe, find themselves at a critical juncture – faced with pressing historical burdens, difficult ethical choices

and a theoretical discourse that at times questions the very idea of the archaeological museum itself. But most importantly, in recent years, many such institutions are confronted with further complex challenges related to the political and cultural crises in the countries from which the objects in their collections originate. The future of archaeological museums as public spaces of education, transcultural encounters and multi-perspective discourse, as well as their social and political significance, will hinge on their willing-ness and ability to meet these challenges, take on their individual historical burdens and make the appropriate ethical choices.

The Vorderasiatisches Museum im Pergamonmuseum (Museum of the Ancient Near East at the Pergamonmuseum) in Berlin, Germany, which houses some 600,000 archaeological objects, mainly from Iraq and Syria, is one such museum. Like many other public repositories of archaeological objects in Europe, the Museum of the Ancient Near East was founded at the end of the 19th century as a museum for the art and architecture of non-European societies of the past. Highlights of its permanent exhibit include reconstructions of the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way from Babylon, as well as the monumental stone sculptures excavated at the site of Tell Halaf. More than 95% of the objects housed at

the museum stem from regular, well-documented archaeological excavations, and entered the collection on the basis of partage agreements with the respective countries of origin.

Today, the Museum of the Ancient Near East is redefining its institutional function on a national and international level, thereby responding to the crucial question of how collections established in a colonial or imperial context can continue to have a meaningful role in a postcolonial world, which is painfully growing aware of the political asymmetries and cultural chasms left behind by colonialism and imperialism.

Challenges and choicesThe Museum of the Ancient Near East and its counterparts are first and foremost facing an internal challenge, posed by their own past: many archaeological museums in western Europe started building their collections of non-European archaeological material at a time when political and cultural relations with the countries of origin were marked by power asymmetry, even in the absence of any immediate colonial or imperial domination. This does not imply that archaeological museums necessarily acted illegally or unethically, or took advantage of these asymmetries in acquiring objects through archaeological excavations or the art market. But archaeological museums with pertinent collections must acknowl-edge the historical burden represented by the political, social

From collecting to protectingby Markus Hilgert, Director, Vorderasiatisches Museum im Pergamonmuseum, Berlin and France Desmarais, Director of Programmes and Partnerships, ICOM General Secretariat

The role of the archaeological museum in safeguarding heritage

Detail from the Processional Way of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, reconstructed at the Museum of the Ancient Near East, Pergamonmuseum, Berlin

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and discursive inequalities surrounding their establishment around the turn of the 20th century.

Beyond mere ly acknowledging this historical burden, archaeological museums must proactively assume responsibility for their past and strive to establish accountability with regard to the history of their objects by carrying out methodical provenance research. While such comprehensive research cannot right past injustices, the sincere effort to system-atically inquire into the circumstances by which archaeological objects entered a museum’s collection, and make existing documentation available to the respective countries of origin and the public, is vital for institutional transparency. It is also a decisive component of bilateral recon-ciliation processes, and most importantly, the door through which archaeological museums enter the floor of postcolonial international relations.

The second challenge for archaeo-logical museums is external: it is the post-WWII critical theoretical discourse of the humanities and social sciences, which has systematically deconstructed not only archaeology and its conceptual premises, but also historiographical narratives of development and modernity, and the idea of culture as a static and essentialist phenomenon. This discourse has furthermore unmasked the strong constructive power of museum exhibits and the surrogate cultures they invoke by creating artificial object ensembles out of fragmented archaeological situa-tions. Today, archaeological museums need to find the right balance between a multi-perspective, transcultural object presentation that takes into account these theoretical considerations on the one hand, and their fundamental task of documenting, contextualising, interpreting and publicly displaying material remains of past societies in a generally accessible manner, on the other.

The third and most powerful challenge that archaeological museums need to address derives from the fact that the cultural heritage of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and many other countries is now threat-ened with complete annihilation through

damage from military activity, purposeful destruction by political extremist groups and systematic looting by criminals lured by profits in the flourishing illicit antiquities trade. Museums must not close their eyes to this global threat, but instead, mobilise and apply their unique expertise in the international fight to protect the cultural abundance of the past, out of moral obliga-tion and social responsibility: museums would not be public expert institutions with the capacity to help, had the countries of origin – now in turmoil or under attack – not agreed to share their rich heritage with us. However, it is also in our own vital interest to promote cultural diversity and academic f reedom in these countries, for the future and reputa-tion of archaeological museums will largely depend on their ability to forge strong alliances with the respective countries of origin.

Targeting traffickingIllicit trafficking in cultural goods is one of the biggest single threats to the cultural heritage of humankind. For institutions with high visibility, fighting illicit traffic starts with taking a bold public stance, adhering to a strict code of ethics such as the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums, and implementing best practices guidelines. At the Museum of the Ancient Near East, measures include a general rule banning further acquisitions, a highly restrictive policy on the preparation of expert reports, and comprehensive provenance research. Close communication and cooperation with the respective countries of origin is also decisive to these efforts.

Together with a network of partner insti-tutions including the ICOM International Observatory on Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods, the Federal Criminal Police Office and the German Foreign Office, the Museum of the Ancient Near East is spear-heading a new national research project analysing the illicit traffic of archaeological objects, mainly from Iraq and Syria, in Germany. Funded by the Federal Ministry

for Education and Research for a three-year period, this research alliance features an innovative methodological design combining academic and non-academic expertise. The transdisciplinary research project ILLICID aims to develop and test criminological methods for an in-depth analysis of illicit traffic in cultural goods, focusing on object type, turnover, networks and operation modes. The results may also contribute to the long-term implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2199 on a national level.

The ICOM Red Lists of Cultural Objects at Risk are essential tools for fighting illicit

trafficking of cultural goods and ra is ing awareness of this issue. For the 2015 update of ICOM’s Emergency Red List for Iraq, the Museum of the Ancient Near East provided a considerable number of provenanced objects, object descriptions and a German trans-

lation. The German version of this Red List, sponsored by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, will be launched in January 2016 in Berlin.

Given the multiple challenges they currently face and their potentially key role in the face of conflict, repositories of archaeological cultural heritage such as the Museum of the Ancient Near East possess a singular capacity to contribute greatly not only to bilateral reconciliation efforts and academic discourse, but also to social and political processes, thereby establishing a new operative paradigm for archaeological museums. Whether they will be able to live up to this potential will depend entirely on the openness of the respective institutions to these tasks and their willingness to adapt their institutional profile accordingly. However, in the face of the violent extremism and brutal narratives of hatred and death haunting us these days, museums are able to embark on this promising mission by disseminating the one narrative for which they are perfectly cut out: that of social diversity, cultural equality and infinite human creativity. ■

Museums must mobilise and apply their unique

expertise in the international fight to protect the cultural

abundance of the past, out of moral obligation

and social responsibility

ICOM GENERAL CONFERENCE MILAN 2016

Italy beckonsExcursion Day is an ICOM General Conference tradition – a day off to discover the host city of Milan, and various destinations in north and central Italy. You will be free to choose an outing from among the many possibilities, which will soon be available on the General Conference website and bookable online.

Stay tuned for more details at www.milano2016.icom.museum and on the ICOM Milano 2016 Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ICOMGeneralConference

24 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

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Prelude to MilanOn 28 November, 2015, ICOM’s National and International Committees came together in the town of Brescia, Italy, to discuss the theme, Museums, territorial systems and urban landscapes.

by Aedín Mac Devitt, ICOM General Secretariat

A precursor to the ICOM General Conference in Milan in 2016, the event was held in the Santa Giulia Museum, run by the Brescia Musei Foundation, and which displays Brescia’s history, art and religious heritage from prehistoric times to the present day. A warm welcome was extended to conference participants by the City of Brescia, the Brescia Museum Foundation and the Lombardy Region.

ICOM President Hans-Martin Hinz took the opportunity to speak about the stereotypes natural and cultural landscapes have created around countries and nations, while François Mairesse, Chair of ICOFOM (International Committee for Museology), gave his interpretation of the theme, and asked the audience to consider our limitations when contemplating museum activity. During his address, Daniele Jalla, Chair of ICOM Italy, emphasised three different landscapes of museology: collections, cultural heritage, and territory and community.

The Chair of the ICOM Milan 2016 Organising Committee, Alberto Garlandini, explained that 60 proposals had been received in response to the Call for Papers for the conference. Among those, 18 were chosen for presentation at the event. These included Ecomuseums as precursors to a participated management of landscape, exploring the ecomuseum network in the Italian region of Piedmont, and Monticello: revealing a world heritage cultural landscape, which focused on a study of the cultural landscape of the home of United States founding father Thomas Jefferson.

ICOM Director General Anne-Catherine Robert-Hauglustaine spoke about the celebrations planned for ICOM’s 70th anniversary at the General Conference in Milan, including an exhibition on the history of the organisation, and a publication on ethics, edited by Bernice Murphy, former ICOM Ethics Committee Chair. I, myself, briefly presented the Call for Papers open on the theme of Museums and cultural landscapes for the journal Museum International, with details on the submission process1.

The event was concluded with an address by Silvia Costa, President of the Committee on culture and education in the European Parliament and Luigi Maria Di Corato, President of the Brescia Musei Foundation.

A visit of the Monastery of San Salvatore, a UNESCO World Heritage site, completed the Saturday programme, and participants were given a guided tour of the Milan 2016 conference site (MICO) the following day.

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Quiet on the set!ICOM films interviews to celebrate its 70th anniversaryFor the occasion of the celebration of its 70th anniversary in 2016, ICOM has filmed a series of interviews with some of its members in collaboration with the Parisian production agency Bird. These interviews will be presented as part of a retrospective exhibition at ICOM’s 24th General Conference on 3-9 July, 2016 in Milan. The project is the result of a successful partnership between Bird, an agency specialised in conducting interviews and managing and highlighting filmed and oral histories, the ICOM General Secretariat, and the curator of the exhibition, François Mairesse, Chair of ICOFOM (International Committee for Museology).

The interviewees, who were chosen with a focus on diversity and representativeness, enthusiastically recalled their experiences within the organisation and shared their vision of the events that have marked its history. Hans-Martin Hinz (ICOM President) and Dominique Ferriot (former Chair of ICOM France) discussed the creation of ICOM and the policy of opening up the organisation in the 1970s. Hugues de Varine-Bohan (former ICOM Director) and Luis Monreal (former ICOM Secretary General) spoke about the economic hardships of the 1960s, while Martin Schärer (Ethics Committee Chair, former ICOM Vice President) and Terry Nyambe (ICOM Zambia Chair) explained the origin and development of the Code of Ethics. These interviews highlight ICOM’s accomplishments but also offer a perceptive look at its current challenges and future developments. As Gaël de Guichen (member of ICOM-CC) explains, ‘If you have a good idea that could create a change, no matter how small, in society or in the world of museums, it can take 25 years to see the effects of that change. So you have to start early, and…be stubborn! But in the end, if the idea is big, if you’re right, and if it brings about a positive change in society, you’ll get there.’

In order to collect the stories, Bird used its expertise by creating an interview form with documentation support from the UNESCO-ICOM Information Centre. The audiovisual production team La Laverie was commissioned to enhance the aesthetic quality of the videos for their screening in the exhibition space. The videos were edited by topic, with sound and visual design elaborated in order to facilitate the public’s understanding of their content.

In addition to presenting the videos to the public as part of the exhibition, this project aims to create relevant and lasting historical content that can be archived, studied and used by future generations. ICOM and Bird have laid the foundation for thought process and practice aimed at preserving and highlighting the voices of the many diverse individuals who make up the organisation and who shape its history on a daily basis. ■

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Interview with Hugues de Varine-Bohan

ICOM GENERAL CONFERENCE MILAN 2016

Since 1977, ICOM has cele-brated International Museum Day (IMD) to encourage public awareness of the role of mu-seums in the development of society. In 2015, nearly 35,000 museums in 145 countries participated in the event by organising specific activities. In 2016, the worldwide commu-nity of museums will celebrate the next International Museum

Day on 18 May, around the theme Museums and cultural land-scapes. This will also be the theme of the 2016 ICOM General Conference to be held in Milan, Italy. It highlights the responsibility of museums not only to their collections, but also to their environ-ment, including the cities, villages and communities to which they belong, and calls on them to promote and communicate about their own collections as well as the cultural and natural heritage

that surrounds them. Museums of all kinds can contribute to sus-tainable development by strengthening ties between people and their environment.

Museums and cultural landscapes asks museums to partici-pate in raising awareness, making them ambassadors of a geo-graphic area and engaging them in actively protecting cultural and natural heritage.

We invite all of the world’s museums – large or small, urban or rural, dedicated to the arts or sciences – to join us on 18 May in cel-ebrating the complex link between people and their environment.

The official IMD website has also been launched and features the IMD 2016 poster and web banner in several languages, along with a kit for museums that contains tools, guidance and examples.

We are counting on the participation of everyone to make IMD a unifying and festive event worldwide!

For further information:http://network.icom.museum/international-museum-dayhttps://www.facebook.com/internationalmuseumday

Cultural objects disappear every day, whether stolen from a museum or removed from an archaeological site, to embark on the well-beaten track of illicit antiquities – a track we have yet to map clearly.

The need to understand that journey, to establish the routes, to identify the culprits, and to ultimately locate these sought-after objects, gave rise to the launch of the first International Observatory on Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods by ICOM in January 2013, with the finan-cial support of the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Pro-gramme of the European Com-mission’s Directorate-General Home Affairs. This is the fruit of ICOM’s long-term involvement

in the fight against illicit traffic in cultural property, and was cre-ated to serve as a permanent international cooperative platform and network of international organisations, law enforcement agencies, research institutions and other external expert stakeholders.

A transdisciplinary publication entitled Countering Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods: The Global Challenge of Protecting the World’s Heritage concludes the initial phase of the Observatory project, providing articles signed by researchers and academics, mu-seum and heritage professionals, archaeologists, legal advisors, curators and journalists. It includes case studies on looting in spe-cific countries, with the primary aim of eliciting the nature of the antiquities trade, the sources of the traffic and solutions at hand.

The publication was launched on 15 December, 2015, at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, France. It is available online at: http://obs-traffic.museum.

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Countdown to IMD 2016

26 ICOMNEWS | N°3-4 2015

ICOM COMMUNITY

Sixth Regional Museum Meeting held in South East Europeby Sarita Vujkoviæ, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska, Chair of ICOM Bosnia and Herzegovina

New National Committee in Saudi Arabia

From 5 to 8 November, 2015, ICOM’s South East Europe Regional Alliance (ICOM SEE) gathered to-gether with ICOM Bos-nia and Herzegovina and in collaboration with the National Committees of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and the for-mer Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, for the Sixth Regional Museum Meeting at the Museum of Contem-porary Art of the Republic of Srpska in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Devoted to the theme of Social in-clusion and the contemporary museum, the meeting brought together more than 70 museum professionals from Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The conference was inaugurated with the opening of the ex-hibition Space, Form, Touch – the first exhibition in Bosnia and Herzegovina fully adapted for blind and visually impaired visitors and which serves as an example of good practice in this area. The theme was selected because social inclusion is among the leading issues currently faced within contemporary museology, and is one of the biggest professional challenges that museum institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region are strug-gling to overcome. The goal of the conference was for partici-pants to exchange experiences and broaden knowledge related to social inclusion and the role of the museum in contemporary society, and to work out a new strategy concerning museum ac-tions in this field of work.

The programme consisted of 24 expert lectures and presen-tations given by museum professionals from numerous institu-

tions in South East Europe. It emerged that a number of institutions from the re-gion share similar profes-sional experiences and that similar actions related to various aspects of social inclusion were more or less organised in these respec-tive institutions prior to the conference. However, it is necessary to work out a de-tailed and precise working strategy in order to broad-en this topic from a limited domain to apply it to the

everyday activities and programmes of the museums. The final conclusion of this three-day conference is that the

museums, with their specialised programmes and mutual pro-fessional support and networking, contribute to making social inclusion an everyday topic not only in their local communities, but in all segments of the society. Museum institutions have the mutual task of functioning as a platform for systematic actions that are in accordance with appropriate structures of gover-nance. All of the above will contribute to long-term realisation of these goals.

Special guests of the conference were two professors from Italy, Roberto Zancan (UNESCO Venice) and Guido Incerti (Uni-versity of Ferrara), who gave lectures connecting the theme with that of the 2016 ICOM General Conference, Museums and cultur-al landscapes, which also resonated in the post conference tour: a one-day field trip to the Kozara National Park and memorial complex housed there, whose highlight is the modernist monu-ment by Dušan Džamonja. This memorial complex represents a unique example within Bosnia and Herzegovina of incorporating monumental architecture into natural surroundings. ■

ICOM is pleased to announce the creation of a new National Committee in Saudi Arabia by vote of approval at the 132nd session of the Executive Council in December 2015. The project was initiated in February 2015 through the Membership Department of the ICOM General Secretariat, with the assistance of Abdulaziz Alsaleh, Counselor of Tourism

and Heritage for the Permanent Delega-tion of Saudi Arabia to UNESCO, and a first meeting was organised at the recommendation of the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to UNESCO. The coordina-tion of the creation of the Saudi National Committee was subsequently taken over by the Saudi Heritage Preserva-tion Society (SHPS) under the direction

of Princess Adila bint Abdullah Al Saud and Ms Maja Al-Senan. Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud was appointed Chair; Rana Alshaikh, Secre-tary; and Fahad Al Mandl, Treasurer. As of December 2015, ICOM Saudi Arabia counted seven individual members and one institutional member. ■

Conference participants at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Republic of Srpska, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina

N°3-4 2015 | ICOMNEWS 27

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Review by Edward R. Bosley, Director, The Gamble House, University of Southern California, US

With apologies to Kermit the Frog, museum and historic site administrators can agree: it’s not easy being green. I’m glad that I read beyond ‘Green

choices are usually complex choices,’ in Sarah Sutton’s Environmental Sustainability at Historic Sites and Museums, which lobs that slightly daunting statement into an otherwise scrupulously practical, highly readable presentation of environmentally sustainable practices for museum professionals. Using a case study approach, Sutton’s 208-page title methodically unpacks those complexities for us, offering a refreshingly straightforward guide for institutional leaders on how to inspire staff, volunteers, donors and visitors to embrace being ‘green’, and how to actually do so.

Sarah Sutton (formerly Sarah S. Brophy) comes to the subject with credentials; she began writing on these issues more

than a decade ago. Her book co-authored with Elizabeth Wylie, The Green Museum: A Primer on Environmental Practice (AltaMira Press, 2008) has served as the standard text on the subject. This volume is essentially the continuation of a theme with a bit more emphasis on historic sites. Larger institutions, with facilities staffing that might include an energy analyst, will understand the book’s use of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) as a meaningful metric for determining institutional progress towards sustainability goals. The Minnesota Historical Society, for example, measures metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (MT Co2e) to evaluate its carbon footprint at 26 historic sites with 700+ staff, 24,000 members and 700,000 annual visitors. The text also recognises smaller institutions that may only be able to measure ‘greenness’ by occasionally noticing a shrinking power bill or an overflowing recycling bin. The main point, the author frequently reminds us, is that it’s never too late to begin to effect change in practice and mindset, no matter how big or small the institution. The low-hanging fruit is addressed, like swapping out incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs in favour of cooler, more efficient LEDs. More sophisticated and costly capital improvements are also described, such as geothermal and solar energy-generation, which can create substantial environmental benefits at institutions that are able to invest in longer payout periods. In an illustration of the former, the Minnesota Historical Society calculated that the relatively easy and inexpensive choice of switching to LED light bulbs also led to the unanticipated effect of lowering cooling costs in summer due to a significant reduction in directional heat versus the discarded incandescent technology.

Also impressive about this slim volume is its holistic approach. In Chapter 5, Elizabeth Wylie recounts her efforts at American writer Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, to creatively engage with opportunities presented by hundreds of acres of land and farm buildings, while meeting the day-to-day challenges of conserving and interpreting the literary giant’s legacy. She turns to O’Connor’s own thrifty sensibility for guidance: ‘row crops fed the cattle, chickens and other fowl helped keep ticks and chiggers at bay while providing eggs and meat.’ This subsistence-like approach not only holds the promise of reducing carbon footprint and saving money, it also restores a historically correct ethic to the farm’s operations and, not incidentally, opens exciting new avenues for interpreting Andalusia Farm to the public. In case study #4, ‘Greening From the Ground Up’, John Forti, Curator of Historic Landscapes at Strawberry Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, offers equally inspiring tips on how his institution integrates its operations with a self-imposed mandate to locally source most of its institutional needs, thus reducing or eliminating GHG emissions related to long-distance transportation of goods to its site.

Some of these admirable initiatives will be neither easy nor inexpensive to carry out for many institutions. Sutton sums up the financial demands of going green: ‘you will keep wondering “how do I pay for this?” The answer is “the same way you pay for anything else at your institution”… It’s a cost of doing business.’ This sober observation is typical of the book’s occasionally daunting, frequently inspiring, always practical tone. Not only has the author organised an intuitively desirable and ultimately doable prescription for professionals to pursue environmental sustainability at their institutions, she has also led us to understand fresh ways for museums and historic sites to remain relevant in the 21st century, something any professional should gladly seek.

Environmental Sustainability at Historic Sites and MuseumsAuthor: Sarah SuttonPublisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015

ICOM PRESIDENT Hans-Martin Hinz

DIRECTOR GENERAL Anne-Catherine Robert-Hauglustaine

EDITOR IN CHIEF Sara Heft

TRANSLATION Kristina Jackson

CONTRIBUTORS Elisabeth Jani Ninon Sordi

DESIGN AND LAYOUT, ADVERTISING, PRINTING France Édition Multimédia 70 avenue Alfred Kastler - CS 90014 66028 Perpignan Cedex Tel +33 (0)4 68 66 94 75 francedit@francedit.com

© ICOM ISSN 1020-6418

COVER IMAGE© RUSSIA STATE MUSEUM OF KIZHI

In 2016, ICOM News is going fully digital.Stay tuned for details on the launch of the new online platform in the coming months.

If you wish to know more or get involved as a contributor, please contact Sara Heft: sara.heft@icom.museum

Seeing green

ICOM News is a magazine published by the International Council of Museums in English, French and Spanish, with the financial assistance of the French Ministry of Culture. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not commit ICOM in any way and are the responsibility of their authors.

ICOM Maison de l’UNESCO 1, rue Miollis 75732 Paris Cedex 15 France Tel +33 (0) 1 47 34 05 00 Fax + 33 (0) 1 43 06 78 62 secretariat@icom.museum http://icom.museum

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www.icom.museum @ICOMofficielwww.facebook.com/International.Council.of.Museums

18

Journée internationale des musées

Día internacional de los museos

maymaimayo2016

musées et paysages culturels

museums and cultural landscapes

museos y paisajes culturales

International museum day