Air Museum Network – Today is International Museum Day!

International Museum Day 2013: museums all over the world have the place of honour

Every year since 1977, International Museum Day is held worldwide sometime around May 18. This

year, more than 30,000 museums are getting ready to celebrate the event in around 100 countries on the five continents!

The theme: Museums (Memory + Creativity) = Social Change

The theme of the International Museum Day 2013, Museums (Memory + Creativity) = Social Change, aims at showing that the richness of our historical heritage, preserved and displayed by museums, together with the inventiveness and vitality that have characterised the museum sector’s action in recent years, are where the strength of museum institutions lies today.

This truly optimistic theme in the form of an equation dynamically gathers several concepts that are essential to define what a museum is today, highlighting the universal nature of those institutions and their positive influence on society.

Activities around the world

Museums take advantage of the International Museum Day to meet their public and organise original activities. For instance:

– In Canada, the Bank of Canada’s Currency Museum offers to gather around collections brought in by the visitors;
– In Nigeria, objects from the reserves of the National Museum Lagos will be displayed in the museum courtyard on 20 May. The next day, a conference on the IMD theme will be animated by a museum professional, followed by a traditional dance show and a theatre play
performed by the museum staff;
– In Mexico, the Museo de la Luz in Mexico City organises the reading of tales in the museum’s rooms, spectacular demonstrations on the use of lights, a science rally and a conference on the theme “The Scientific Culture in Museums and the Informal Education”.

Partners

Since 2011, ICOM patronizes the European Night of Museums, which is held every year on the Saturday closest to the International Museum Day. In 2013, both events will coincide since the European Night of Museums will take place at the same time as International Museum Day, on Saturday, May 18.

On the occasion of the International Museum Day 2013, ICOM is partnering with the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2012.

Finally, the European Museum Forum (EMF) will grant the European Museum of the Year Award on May 18, 2013, in the Gallo-Romeins Museum of Tongeren (Belgium), within the frame of a partnership with ICOM.

What is International Museum Day?

Traditionally, International Museum Day is organised around May 18. It can last a day, a weekend or a whole week, the objective being to meet at the museum with the motto:

“Museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples”.

Every year since 1977, ICOM organises the event,which represents a unique moment for the international museum community. On this day, participating museums highlight an issue affecting all cultural organisations. International Museum Day is also a fantastic opportunity for museum professionals to meet their public. At the heart of society, museums are institutions dedicated to its development.

IMD is gathering more and more museums from all over the world. In 2012, 32,000museums participated in the event in 129 countries from all five continents.

The IMD theme is proposed by ICOM’s Advisory Committee and aims to promote museum issues within society.

The museum community decided to celebrate IMD 2013 on the theme:

Museums (Memory + Creativity) = Social Change

The richness of our historical heritage, preserved and displayed by museums, together with the inventiveness and vitality that have characterised the museum sector’s action in recent

years, are where the strength of museums institutions lies today. Reconciling their traditional mission of conservation with the creativity necessary for their revival and the

development of their audiences – this is the evolution that museums are trying to undertake, with the strong belief that their presence and actions can transform society constructively.

This truly optimistic theme in the form of an equation dynamically gathers several concepts that are essential to defining what a museum is today, highlighting the universal nature of those institutions and their positive influence on society. It summarises the complexity of museum tasks and recalls that they are meant to contribute to community development and gathering together.

Five sub-themes linked with the theme are suggested in order to help museums organise the event and develop an activity programme:

Informal education structures: Museums educate in a recreational way; they are places of initiation without obligation that foster knowledge through continually renewed means.
A social space rooted in its territory: Museums play a role in the identity and dynamism of their territory. Through their action, they contribute to promote the past of their territory and build its future.
An intergenerational link: Museums keep the relationship between a community and its history alive. They are spaces for dialogue between generations.
Displaying heritage in a modern way: Museums have quickly been able to seize the communication and mediation opportunities offered by new media and have broken
away from the old-fashioned image they once had.
Innovative practices for a better conservation: Conservation devices are improving and the museum is becoming a real laboratory where work techniques continue to evolve.

Today is International Museum Day!