Ngaire Blankenberg

'Museum Doctor': Cultural Consultant, Content Designer, Writer

  • Home

  • Projects

  • Teaching/Speaking

  • Publications

  • TV/Documentary

  • Blog

  • About

  • Gallery

  • Contact

  • More

    0

    Should museums scrap their claim to ‘education’?

    August 28, 2019

    |

    Ngaire Blankenberg

    ICOM's proposed new definition of museums seem to imply we are giving up on education. Should we cut our losses and move on to saving ourselves and the planet?  

    The International Committee on Museums' new definition, due to be voted on at the AGM in September, has provoked much debate.  Most of the fuss is about the overtly ‘ideological’ focus of the new definition, and many countries’ national and international committees have called for a postponement of the vote.

     

    In the proposed definition, the raison d’etre for museums ‘education, study and enjoyment’, has been replaced by the more ambitious ‘contribute to human dignity, social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing’. (See both definitions below)

     

    Interestingly, of the 269 extremely diverse submissions ICOM received in its quest to develop a new definition, only 80 (less than 30%) even include the word ‘education’ or ‘learning’.The submissions are mainly normative- in that they describe what museums should be, rather than what they are today.  and range from cynical to poetic to incoherent to almost embarrassingly earnest (see my favourites below). 

     

    I agree museums should be more explicit in how and why they contribute to today’s challenges, but I also wonder if the new definition signals an admission by museums that they have failed to live up to their ‘educational’ claims.

     

    ‘Education’ itself is a term that is continuously being defined and re-defined, but I would argue that most ‘lay people’ accept the definition given by the Oxford Dictionary: 'the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university’.  For most, education involves structured learning, educational standards, curricula, and measurable outcomes. You can tell if you’ve learned something and you can tell if you haven’t.

     

    Museums have long been pushing the value of the far less structured or outcomes based ‘informal education’ They speak about the attitudes, values and skills that visits to museums build, yet these are notoriously difficult to measure- making it extremely challenging for museums to prove this is what they do.

     

    The proposed new definitions seem to imply museums around the world are giving up.  I think this is premature. I don’t think museums are coming close to fulfilling their potential as learning institutions, but I think they can.

     

    All museums contain rich knowledge resources that can provide visitors with a much more robust educational experience that is short-term and measurable. To start with, museums can do much more when it comes to connecting their content with the classroom even without having to invest in a dedicated education department. Museums can ask themselves how (or whether) teachers and learners can even access, let alone use, their content.

     

    Too often museum knowledge resources remain ‘locked’- accessible only through a visit, or through a hard-to-find website, and impossible to re-purpose, re-use or evaluate.

     

    Can museums develop into truly 21st century teaching tools that support ‘formal education’ and social and environmental justice?

     

    My new project is betting on it… and I will need your help!   

    Watch this space

     

     

    Some interesting museum definitions from the ICOM proposals

    #69 United Kingdom: A museum is a word about which people with little experience of the real world navel gaze. 

     

    #33 Columbia: The Museum is a Cultural Horizon where human life forms converge with nature and the universe. 

     

    #108 Greece: The factory of our dreams.

     

    #159 Germany: Museums should be a mirror of the real world with comments. 

     

    #173 Japan: A space where object are made to speak to human kind who long for story to be told. 

     

    #202 Brazil …a museum is like a large living tree, planted in a soil rich of heritage, memories and cultural identities.

     

    #243 Greece…Museums are like kaleidoscopes. Crystals are the people, spaces and objects. ..

     

    The handful with Education as their focus:

    #63 Slovakia: ‘Museum is our modern school;

     

    #79 Norway ‘Museums are fundamentally public spaces for lifelong informal learning’;

     

    #111 Taiwan ‘Museum is a smart learning centre’.

     

    ICOM's proposed new definition:

     

    ‘democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people.

     

    Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity, social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing.”

     

    ICOM's current definition:

     “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.”

    Please reload

    Our Recent Posts

    The 50 year old Entrepreneur: Money and Mentors

    October 2, 2019

    The 50-year old entrepreneur. Part 2.

    September 10, 2019

    The 50-year old entrepreneur. Part 1.

    September 10, 2019

    Please reload

    Archive

    October 2019

    September 2019

    August 2019

    March 2019

    January 2019

    November 2018

    June 2018

    May 2018

    March 2018

    February 2018

    Please reload

    Tags

    Agriculture

    Art

    Commercial

    Concept development

    Creativity

    Curating

    Designer

    Diversity

    ECSITE

    Ethnographic Collection

    Exhibition

    Facilitator

    Feedback

    Global

    Green Revolution

    ICOM

    Jargon

    NGO

    Philippines

    Private sector

    Text

    Trust

    UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People

    Visioning

    Workshop

    angel investor

    app

    art

    audiences

    canadian museum of history

    canadian museums

    collections

    contemporary art

    cultural genocide

    culture

    curator

    decolonization

    digital museum planning

    diversity

    dusseldorf

    edtech

    empowerment

    entrepreneur

    entrepreneurship

    eurocentric

    europe

    funding

    future

    germany

    income

    interdisciplinary

    inuit art centre

    kunstammlung nordrhein westfalen

    learning

    mentors

    mind museum

    modernism

    money

    museum definition

    museum education

    museum global

    museum learning

    museum ludwig

    museums

    museums art germany diversity empowerment zaknrw k

    national gallery of canada

    privilege

    professionalism

    quantum revolution

    race

    reconciliation

    science centers

    science communication

    science engagement

    scientific lexicon

    seed funding

    shuvinai ashoona

    singapore science centre

    social enterprise

    softpower

    startup

    the Power Plant

    traditional knowledge keepers

    transformation

    truth

    truth and reconciliation commission of canada

    venture capital

    visitor centre

    whiteness

    zaknrw

    Please reload

     

    Contact

    ngaire.blankenberg@gmail.com

    +34 655 670 835

    skype: ngaire.jane.blankenberg

    ©2018 by Ngaire Blankenberg. Proudly created with Wix.com