Museo: Spanish word for Museum.
According to ICOM (the International Council of Museums) 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.
Metamorphosis: A marked transformation in form, appearance, character, condition, or function. To alter, be reborn, change, convert, mutate, remake, remodel, reshape, transfigure, transform, translate, transmogrify.
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| V&A Museum of Childhood - London, UK |
I’m fortunate in that my parents afforded me a strong cultural education. From a very young age I was enrolled in dance, drama, music and visual art classes, which exposed me to a wide variety of creative techniques and media. As a family, we visited many museums and historic sites (which were always at the top of our hit list when travelling). These positive early learning experiences fostered a love of material culture objects. So it’s really no surprise that I later decided to study museums and have come to work as an administrator, curator and educator.
Relationships between museums and their visitors have changed significantly over the past 200 years, indeed even in the last 30-odd years of my own life. From places of worship and quiet contemplation to ‘hands-on’ exploration sites providing 'edutainment' (though that’s putting the transition far too simply!) There's been an ongoing debate in both print and social media about whether this shift is a good or bad thing, but I’m not convinced it has to be an either/or scenario. I believe participative cultural citizenship has myriad forms and that meaningful museum experiences can be as diverse as the very visitors who seek them out.
Relationships between museums and their visitors have changed significantly over the past 200 years, indeed even in the last 30-odd years of my own life. From places of worship and quiet contemplation to ‘hands-on’ exploration sites providing 'edutainment' (though that’s putting the transition far too simply!) There's been an ongoing debate in both print and social media about whether this shift is a good or bad thing, but I’m not convinced it has to be an either/or scenario. I believe participative cultural citizenship has myriad forms and that meaningful museum experiences can be as diverse as the very visitors who seek them out.
My motivations for creating the museomorph blog are multi-fold:
- To think: writing provides precious pondering time. It encourages reflection both on my day-to-day practice as a museum worker and first-hand encounters as a visitor.
- To connect: blogging is a great way to link-in with likeminded professionals and bandy ideas about, even if we work with different collections or in opposite hemispheres.
- To make a record: I’m curating my own collection of posts in an effort to capture significant turning points for museums as they shape shift alongside the societies they serve.
