Why does International Museum Day matter?
Thursday, May 18th was International Museum Day. This is a big day. It is a day that has been marked on the calendar now for 40 years to raise awareness about how important museums are in the development of society.
Yeah! Museums are important to the development of society!
Cue fist pump →
Before we get into the meat of this blog indulge me in a side tangent… Because I enjoy the things Google tells me like the official definition of a fist pump, I am going to share it with you.
fist pump
US | informal
noun
- a gesture of triumph or affirmation in which the forearm is raised with fist clenched, then swung downward toward the body in a vigorous pumping motion.
“his 25-foot birdie was greeted with fist pumps and high fives”
verb
- swing one’s clenched fist and raised forearm downward toward the body in a vigorous pumping motion as a gesture of triumph or affirmation.
“”Yes!” Rachel yelped and fist-pumped from behind her laptop”
Side tangent over. Back to International Museum Day.
The International Council of Museums aka ICOM’s Advisory Committee organizes the event and theme of this day each year. Because of the high number of countries involved, International Museum Day has come to stretch much longer than just one day. It lasts the weekend, a week and sometimes even a month. A month long celebration of this makes sense since May is Museums month, right? Right.
In recent years, International Museum Day has been experiencing its highest involvement. In 2016, more than 35,000 museums participated in the event in some 145 countries.
This day makes me happy because this is how I view museum professionals who are the orchestrators behind making International Museum Day a thing:
Let me tell you a little bit more. The purpose of International Museum Day:
…to raise awareness of the fact that, “Museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples.”
Doesn’t that sound a lot like the description of what a super hero does? Maybe it’s just me.
The International Museum Day theme for 2017 is: “Museums and contested histories: Saying the unspeakable in museums.”
To dive a little bit deeper into the meaning of this theme I visited their trusty website and found this golden nugget of information.
By focusing on the role of museums as hubs for promoting peaceful relationships between people, this theme highlights how the acceptance of a contested history is the first step in envisioning a shared future under the banner of reconciliation.
This struck a cord with me because I find the theme of 2017’s International Museum Day (IMD) to be an interesting echo after coming back from the American Alliance of Museums conference in St. Louis.
The theme for this year’s IMD seems to align with the trends of Elizabeth Merritt’s TrendsWatch for 2017 who presented these trends in her highly anticipated session at the AAM conference.
For the non-museums professionals out there, “The TrendsWatch is an annual report that summarizes museum trends identified through research conducted by the Center for the Future of Museums (CFM).” This report is widely regarded as a key resource for the museum field.
The TrendsWatch identifies 2017’s trends as the following:
- Empathy
- Criminal Justice Reform
- Artificial Intelligence
- Migration and Refugees
- Agile Design
If you’ve ever embarked on a peaceful relationship in your life you know that empathy is a helpful ingredient to understanding one another and therefore having a peaceful relationship with another human. TrendsWatch’s Empathy and IMD’s ‘promoting peaceful relationships between people’ seem to echo similar things.
TrendsWatch’s Criminal Justice Reform & Migration and Refugees trends lines up with IMD’s ‘acceptance of a contested history is the first step in envisioning a shared future.’ Many would say that criminal justice reform & migration and refugees would fall under the category of contested history.
Disclaimer: I am not saying that the connection between these two TrendsWatch trends and IMD’s theme for the year is that those who have lived these two trends need to move on from their past in order to have a shared future or reconciliation. Not saying that.
Instead, this is an opportunity to shed light on the harsh realities of these two worlds and for the general public to accept that these things are happening. These trends are an opportunity for museums to serve as an incubator for critical thought and positive change around these topics. Let me show you what I mean. Some museums are already doing just that.
In TrendsWatch 2017, the exhibit “Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” at the Eastern State Penitentiary museum is highlighted:
“The museum staff shifted from their historic position of neutrality on the subject of prison reform. The exhibit opens with the phrase “MASS INCARCERATION ISN’T WORKING” in 400-point font; videos feature bipartisan statements on reform; visitors are asked to admit whether or not they have broken the law, and, if so, to leave a written confession . Staff see the exhibit as a call to empathy, reminding visitors of how they can influence the future of criminal justice in the United States.”
Below is a 360 interaction video of the exhibit. I encourage you to pan to the left and look at what you meet through the doorway in the next room.
https://interactives.ap.org/2016/prisons-today/
How would you feel if you came across this in a museum? Did it make you think about going to prison? What was your immediate thought? Maybe a little feeling of empathy crept in?
~~~
The Eastern State Penitentiary is just one example of museums who are helping to shape the world around them. I could go on for much longer about the similarities of the TrendsWatch and the theme of 2017 IMD. If any of this sparked a bit of interest for you, I encourage you to read the 2017 TrendsWatch, scroll through the feed of #InternationalMuseumDay on Twitter and think about it some more.
I will leave you with this… (If you can read the slide.)
Did you catch that? Museums rank in the top three most trustworthy sources of information.
Dear Museums,
People trust us.
Haven’t you always wanted to change the world?
2017 is our year to do just that.
Let 2017’s TrendsWatch and International Museum Day’s theme be a guiding light for you.
