NEW EVENT: 2014 American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo on The Innovation Edge

18–21 May, Seattle, USA

Innovation is a defining quality of our time. Creating the new, reimagining the old, adapting the present to changing needs have become the goals of the best and the brightest among us. To go from the seed of an idea to universally adopted reality seems to take mere weeks—reading books on our phones, wearing a computer, printing three-dimensional objects in our own homes.

So how can museums engage, support and sustain innovation in their communities? Can they serve as engines of innovation?

Hosted by the American Alliance of Museums, the 2014 Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo in Seattle aims to explore how museums can gain that Innovation Edge by showcasing the best and most innovative models in education, conservation, exhibitions, audience engagement and development.

MuseumExpo highlights

• The show floor will be an interactive extension of more than 150 educational sessions and events. More than 300 exhibitors will display and demonstrate cost- and time-saving solutions and cutting-edge technologies for the museum community and exhibit the latest in technology, exhibit design, lighting, security and countless other innovations critical to the museum field.
• Big idea sessions: Leading and up-and-coming voices from outside the museum field will share innovations, experiences and insights with museum professionals. Speakers this year include: Erik Larson, the award winning and New York Times bestselling author of Thunderstruck, Isaac’s Storm, Lethal Passage and The Naked Consumer; David Fleming, the Director of National Museums Liverpool (NML) and former President and current Vice President of the UK Museums Association; and Denis Hayes, Time magazines “Hero of the Planet,” former Director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Professor of engineering and human ecology at Stanford University.
• Marketplace of ideas: An open-air forum in which museum professionals have the opportunity to participate in informal discussions and exchange ideas on timely issues brought to you by the Professional Networks.
• "The Un-Conference Room": This on-site "pop-up" room facilitates ten, 75-minute meetings on any subject of the speakers choosing and is promoted it to attendees via social media. 

For further information, please visit the Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo website

CALL FOR PAPERS: Museums and Politics

Museums and Politics

9 - 12 of September 2014, Saint-Petersburg, Russia

ICOM Russia, ICOM Germany, ICOM USA Joint Conference

 

In the last few years, museums in our countries have changed dramatically and many now have larger social and territorial responsibilities. The preservation and safeguarding of tangible and intangible cultural heritage is considered the most relevant function of museums and should not be neglected. However, contemporary museums have wider goals. They offer public services and social activities, as well as culture and knowledge. They serve new audiences, use new languages and new media. Innovative museums foster public awareness, promote understanding of heritage and offer educational services. They strengthen cultural identities, support social cohesion and develop intercultural mediation - activities which are fundamental in times of crisis. Museums produce public values and improve regional assets in a global world. They provide facilities and resources for local, regional and national communities. They generate not only knowledge and education, but also income and employment. Museums and monuments are among the most appealing factors for the tourism industry, a vital economic sector in all our countries. Investing in museums, their activities and their professionals, is the best way to develop and improve the quality of cultural tourism.

 

During the last decades, museums have become institutions that form identity of cities, countries and nations with a reasonable political impact. At the same time, the funding of museums has undergone a major alteration, facing cuts from public authorities and the need of finding more and more sponsors whose interests complement museum development. Additionally, museums are increasingly invited to assume and complement educational tasks in the public sector suffering from the training of soft skills and creative competences.

 

Some museums have become more and more influential within their society and the politics in the countries that pay attention to them. Is this growing influence good for museums or not? Could museums become a plaything for politics or should museums use politics to realize their main purposes?

 

The conference languages will be Russian, English and German.

 

The purpose of this joint meeting is to share knowledge and expertise within the museum community. All contributions should be of high quality, originality, clarity, significance and impact and not published elsewhere.

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

The papers must not exceed 20 minutes. A publication of the papers is planned.

 

Abstracts should contain a maximum of 400 words and include the presenter's name, place of employment, position and title of paper.

 

Abstracts should be sent to: Mr. Vladimir Tolstoy (icom.russia@gmail.com) and Johanna Westphal (icom@icom-deutschland.de).

 

Abstract Submission Deadline 28th of February 2014

 

The Return of Aesthetics to Archaeology



Ancient Egyptian funerary mask at the
Oriental Museum, Durham University

Why is ‘aesthetics’ a dirty word in archaeology? Can its archaeological study be reinvigorated, particularly with the help of philosophers and anthropologists?

 

Come and join the discussion at a workshop to be held at the University of London’s Senate House on Thursday 28^th and Friday 29^th November 2013.

 

The workshop is organised within the framework of an AHRC-funded Research Network Group project focused on ‘The Ethics and Aesthetics of Archaeology’. 

 

This wider project brings together philosophers, archaeologists and museum and heritage practitioners in order to focus on the relation between ethics and aesthetics, and explore how this relation shapes the understanding and practice of archaeological stewardship. The main premise underlying our multidisciplinary project is the idea that research into the ethics of stewardship (including moral obligations, duties and respect) will be enhanced significantly by an increased understanding of the role played by the aesthetic character of historical objects in influencing the moral relations we have with them and their makers.

 

The project is directed by two members of staff from Durham University: Dr Elisabeth Schellekens Dammann (Department of Philosophy) and Dr Robin Skeates (Department of Archaeology). They are assisted by Dr. Andreas Pantazatos (Co-Director of the Centre for the Ethics of Cultural Heritage).

 

The London workshop is generously sponsored by the University of London’s Institute of Philosophy. It is open to all, free of charge. Visit our project website for further details.

 

If you intend to attend, do please let us know, by sending an email to Dr Elisabeth Schellekens Dammann.

Stealing the past: an insider's perspective on antiquities looting in Palestinian National Territories



Some of the destruction at the Malawi National Museum

We were met with the news last week that political unrest in Egypt has led to the looting of the nation's precious antiquities with "1,050 artifacts spanning 3,500 years of history...looted from the Malawi National Museum south of Cairo last week". Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova stated last Monday that she had grave concerns for Egypt’s cultural heritage following the reports of looting at the museum, as well as the destruction of several monuments of religious importance, including churches and mosques in Upper Egypt, Fayoum and Cairo.

Antiquities looting is often an unfortunate and devastating biproduct of conflict and war and much has been published on efforts to prevent looting and how to retrieve stolen artifacts from the black market. In the article "Palestinian antiquities looters, their skill development, methodology and specialised terminology: an ethnographic study" published in a 2012 issue of Palestine Exploration Quarterly, Dr Salah H Al-Houdalieh takes the investigation to the source of the problem and attempts to get inside the mind of the looter. In the study Dr Al-Houdalieh interviews 96 antiquities looters in Palestinian National Territories (PNT) with the aim of exploring the measures that have been used by Palestinian antiquities looters to develop their knowledge, fieldwork skills and experience.

The following is an excerpt from the article's introduction:

"The state of Palestine’s archaeological heritage resources is one of serious risk, due to the on-going looting of antiquities. Vandalising archaeological resources is a widespread phenomenon throughout the Palestinian National Territories (PNT) and has resulted in either total or partial damage to thousands of these resources, and the extraction of at least hundreds of thousands of archaeological objects. The main aim of this study is to explore the measures that have been used by Palestinian antiquities looters to develop their knowledge, fieldwork skills and experience. To this end, I interviewed 96 antiquities looters residing in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip, which is totally relevant to the issues under discussion, was only excluded from this study due to the current travel restrictions between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."

Dr Al-Houdalieh goes on to conclude that:

"Conducting interviews with a large number of such individuals provides the researchers with valuable, first-hand information of many kinds, including: some idea of the scale of the phenomenon of antiquities looting; the driving forces behind this vandalising of archaeological resources; the formation operations of the looting gangs; the terminology used among the antiquities looters; the measures used by antiquities looters to develop their knowledge and fieldwork experience; and actual stories about vandalising heritage resources, including descriptions of the extracted archaeological objects and their numbers, among other things. Furthermore, the results of this research indicate that the Palestinian antiquities looters have gained and developed their fieldwork experience through four primary means: taking part in legitimate, licensed archaeological excavations; taking part with others in illicit digging by joining an existing gang; conducting their own looting activities, with family members or friends, without prior knowledge; and, finally, referring to relevant publications, especially catalogues."

>> Read the full article for free

>> "Malawi National Museum Looting Condemned By Unesco Amid Fears Egypt's Cultural Heritage Is In Danger"