(Current version from Code of Ethics for Museums, 2002)
Museums enable people to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment.
They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society.
Society can expect museums to:
A museum is an institution that collects, documents, preserves, exhibits and interprets material evidence and associated information for the public benefit.
1. A museum is a non-profit making, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment.
(a) The above definition of a museum shall be applied without any limitation arising from
the nature of the governing body, the territorial character, the functional structure or
the orientation of the collections of the institution concerned.
(b) In addition to institutions designated as "museums" the following qualify as
museums for the purposes of this definition:
(i) natural, archaeological and ethnographic monuments and sites and historical monuments
and sites of a museum nature that acquire, conserve and communicate material evidence of
people and their environment;
(ii) institutions holding collections of and displaying live
specimens of plants and animals, such as botanical and zoological gardens, aquaria and
vivaria;
(iii) science centres and planetaria;
(iv) non profit art exhibition galleries; conservation
institutes and exhibition galleries permanently maintained by libraries and archives
centres.
(v) nature reserves;
(vi) international or national or regional or local museum
organizations, ministries or departments or public agencies responsible for museums as per
the definition given under this article;
(vii) non-profit institutions or organizations undertaking
conservation, research, education, training, documentation and other activities relating
to museums and museology;
(viii) cultural centres and other entities that facilitate the
preservation, continuation and management of tangible or intangible heritage resources
(living heritage and digital creative activity)
(ix) such other institutions as the Executive Council, after seeking the advice of the Advisory Committee, considers as having some or all of the characteristics of a museum, or as supporting museums and professional museum personnel through museological research, education or training.
2. Professional museum workers include all the personnel of museums or institutions qualifying as museums in accordance with the definition in Article 2, para. 1, having received specialized training, or possessing an equivalent practical experience, in any field relevant to the management and operations of a museum, and independent persons respecting the ICOM Code of Professional Ethics and working for museums as defined above, either in a professional or advisory capacity, but not promoting or dealing with any commercial products and equipment required for museums and services.
The word "museum" includes all collections open to the
public, of artistic, technical, scientific, historical or archaeological material,
including zoos and botanic gardens, but excluding libraries, except in so far as they
maintain exhibition rooms.
Para. 1.
The word museum here denotes any permanent establishment, administered in the general
interest, for the purpose of preserving, studying and enhancing by various means and, in
particular, of exhibiting to the public for its delectation and instructions groups of
objects and specimens of cultural value: artistic, historic, scientific and
technological collections, botanic and zoological gardens and aquariums.
Para. 2.
Public libraries and public archival institutions maintaining permanent exhibition rooms
shall be considered to be museums.
Note: Exactly the same words were used in the
subsequent new sets of Statutes adopted in July 1956 and July 1959.
Article 3.
ICOM shall recognize as a museum any permanent institutions which conserves and displays,
for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, collections of objects of cultural or
scientific significance.
Article 4.
Within this definition shall fall:
A museum is a permanent non-profit institution in the service of society and its development which collects, conserves, researches, and interprets for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment.
ICOM also recognizes as falling within the definition of a museum in respect of their roles in relation to the physical heritage a wide range of related institutions including:
** Note: Between 1974 and 1992 the final phrase of the first sentence of the original French version of the ICOM definition: "... de l'homme et de son environment." was translated literally in the English version as "... of mankind and its environment". This "gender neutral" English translation was adopted in Quebec City General Assembly in September 1992, though the francophone members considered no change was necessary in the French text.
Law 2002-5 of 4 janvier 2002 relating to "Musées de France":
Article 1:
Est considérée comme musée, au sens de la présente loi, toute collection permanente composée de biens dont la conservation et la présentation revêtent un intérêt public et organisée en vue de la connaissance, de l'éducation et du plaisir du public.
Article 2:
Les musées de France ont pour missions permanentes de:
a) conserver, restaurer, étudier et enrichir leurs collections
b) rendre leurs collections accessibles au public le plus large
c) Concevoir et mettre en oeuvre des actions d'éducation et de diffusion visant à
assurer l'égal accès de tous à la culture
d) Contribuer au progrès de la connaissance et de la recherche ainsi qu'à leur
diffusion.
A non-profit permanent, established institution, not existing primarily for the purpose of conducting temporary exhibitions, exempt from federal and state income taxes, open to the public and administered in the public interest, for the purpose of conserving and preserving, studying, interpreting, assembling, and exhibiting to the public for its instruction and enjoyment objects and specimens of educational and cultural value, including artistic, scientific ( whether animate or inanimate), historical and technological material.
Museums thus defined shall include botanical gardens, zoological parks, aquaria, planetaria, historical societies, and historic houses and sites which meet the requirements set forth in the preceding sentence.
(After lengthy discussion amongst the museum community in
Australia, Museums Australia revised its definition of 'museum'. The following
new definition, through amendment of Article 5.3 of the Museums Australia Constitution,
was formally adopted at the Annual General Meeting of Museums Australia on 22 March 2002.)
Museums Australia defines "museum" as an institution with the following
characteristics:
A museum helps people understand the world by using objects and ideas to interpret the
past and present and explore the future. A museum preserves and researches collections,
and makes objects and information accessible in actual and virtual environments. Museums
are established in the public interest as permanent, not-for-profit organisations that
contribute
long-term value to communities.
Museums Australia recognises that museums of science, history and art may be designated by
many other names (including gallery and Keeping Place). In addition, the following may
qualify as museums for the purposes of this definition:
(a) natural, archaeological and ethnographic monuments and sites and historical monuments
and sites of a museum nature that acquire, conserve and communicate material evidence of
people and their environment;
(b) institutions holding collections of and displaying specimens of plants and animals,
such as botanical and zoological gardens, herbaria, aquaria and vivaria;
(c) science centres;
(d) cultural centres and other entities that facilitate the preservation, continuation and
management of tangible or intangible heritage resources (living heritage and digital
creative activity);
(e) such other institutions as the Council considers as having some or all of the
characteristics of a museum.
A museum is an institution which collects, conserves, and exhibits materials for mankind, history, archaeology, ethnic customs, arts, animal life, plant life, mineral, science, technology, and industry, thus probes and researches these for purposes of being contributive to the development of culture, arts, and studies, and to the social education of the general public.
An art museum is an institution which collects, conserves, and exhibits materials for arts such as paintings, writings, sculptures, crafts, architectures, and photographs, thus probes and researches these for purposes of being contribute to the development of culture and arts, and to the cultural education of the general public.
What is a Museum?
A museum is a non-profit institution which collects, analyses, preserves and presents objects belong to cultural and natural heritage in order to increase the amount and quality of knowledge. A museum should entertain its visitors and help them to relax. Using scientific arguments and modern language, it should assist people to understand the experience of the past. In its mutual relationship with its users, it should find in past experience the wisdom necessary for the present and the future.
Another open definition which can include other institutions of a similar type concerned with heritage might be that the museum is a regular, non-profit, organized activity in the field of heritage. it is concerned either with the past or the present, depending on the special needs and circumstances of the community which it serves by mediating the complex human experience.
It is a cybernetic mechanism meeting the permanent human need for the pleasure of understanding and the widening of experience, as well as a means of reaching or defend a balance within the complex communal identity. The museum is a way to extend human senses and increase the possibilities of understanding of and sensitivity to heritage. Its aim is to promote the wise, harmonious and moderate development of its environment.
. An ecomuseum is an instrument conceived, fashioned and operated jointly by a public [e.g.. local] authority and its local population. The public authority's involvement is through the experts [staff], facilities and resources it provides; the local population's involvement depends on its aspirations, knowledge and individual approach.
It is a mirror for the local population to view itself to discover its own image, and in which it seeks an explanation of the territory to which it is attached and of the populations that have preceded it... It is a mirror that the local population holds up to its visitors to be better understood and so that its industry, customs and identity may command respect.
It is an expression of humankind and nature. it places humanity in its natural environment. It portrays nature both in its wilderness and as adapted by traditional and industrial society.
A few simple principles: the objective is the service of humankind and not the reverse; time and space do not imprison themselves behind doors and walls and art is not the sole cultural expression of humanity.
The museum professional is a social being, an actor for change, a servant of the community. The visitor is not a docile consumer, regarded as an idiot, but a creator who can and should participate in the building of the future - the museum's research.
The term 'new museology' has been introduced in museological literature at at least three different times at three different places. The use of the term is connected with the changing role of museums in education and in society at large. Current museum practices are considered obsolete and the whole attitude of the professional is criticized. The profession is urged to renew itself in the perspective of a new social commitment. As such the term 'new museology' was first introduced in the United States in 1958 by Mills and Grove in their contribution to S. De Borghegyi's book "The modern museum and the community".
The second time was in 1980 by the French museologist Andre Desvallees in his article on museology for the supplement of the "Encyclopaedia Universalis" (France). Finally, in 1989 the term was used as the title of a book edited by Peter Vergo (United Kingdom).
It is the French concept of 'museologie nouvelle' that gradually became recognized as on of the main streams within museology. The term has been monopolized by two related organizations: the Association Museologie Nouvelle et Experimentation Sociale (MNES), founded in 1982 in France, and the Movement Internationale pour la Museologie Nouvelle (MINOM), founded in 1984. MINOM is an international organization affiliated with ICON. Its aim is more or less as Sandy Kaul has described (24 Sept. 1996).
From mensch@MUS.AHK.NL Fri Oct 25 16:29:55 1996 on the MUSEUM-L discussion group
Dr Peter van Mensch
senior lecturer of theoretical museology and museum ethics
Reinwardt Academie
Dapperstraat 315
1093 Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Museums are about collecting appropriate historic objects, conserving them, and then, where possible, exhibiting and interpreting them in the most appropriate way.
I jokingly remark that the museum is a "super garage".
Museums Journal, November, 1996, p. 27
...any national collection must to a considerable extent function as a reference library, a repository of the forgotten, the neglected, the arcane and the almost utterly negligible...like the rarely opened pages of an encylopaedia.
[Describing the English Midlands historic town of "Treby" - a thinly disguised Ashby-De-La-Zouch, Leicestershire - at the time of the Great Reform Bill, 1832]:
Its castle, for example, was amongst the most remarkable of English ruins: it had every traditional honour that could belong to an English castle. Plantagenets had held wassail in it; the houses of York and Lancaster had contended for it, and only the dullest mind could remain unthrilled by the probable conjecture that the cruel tyrant Richard the Third had slept in it (doubtless with bad dreams) shortly before the battle of Bosworth Field....
... the fragmentary wall of the keep was fenced up and an arched entrance was furnished with a door whereon it was announced that within, on payment of sixpence to the guardian, might be seem that portion of the castle inhabited by the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of Scots....
Several articles of rusty iron, dug up in the vicinity were deposited in a small pavilion near the pump-room, and with a larger number of mugs, baskets and pin cushions inscribed as "Presents from Treby" formed a Museum which any one was at liberty to enter at the small price of sixpence.
In short, every inducement was offered to patients who combined gout with antiquarianism a passion for antiquarian hypothesis, a debility with a taste for the biography of queens, or a general decay of the vital processes with a tendency to purchase superfluous small wares and make inexpensive presents.
We are obliged to know what o'clock it is, for the safety of our ships, and therefore we pay for an observatory; and allow ourselves, in the person of our Parliament, to be annually tormented into doing something in a slovenly way, for the British Museum; sullenly apprehending that to be a place for keeping stuffed birds in, to amuse our children.
From:: Sesame and Lilies, 1871; Lecture I, Sesame - of Kings and Treasuries
...The first function of a museum... is to give examples of perfect order and perfect elegance, in the true sense of the word, to the rude and disorderly populace. Everything in its own place, everything looking its best because there is nothing crowded, nothing unnecessary, nothing puzzling. Therefore, after a room has once been arranged there must be no change in it. For new possessions there must be new rooms...
From: The Lamps of Beauty: Writings on Art, 1800: A Museum or Picture Gallery: its function and its formation (selected and edited by Joan Evans, London: Phaidon Press, 1989)
Further contributions and suggestions very welcome: please submit by
e-mail to Patrick Boylan as above.
Last revised, 3 August 2002.