Museums are places where objects that chronicle the past and depict the present are kept and displayed for public viewing. They are also sites for critical dialogue about the future. They hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories and knowledge, and provide equitable access to heritage for all people.
Museums have been around for centuries. They are often classified as a non-profit and operated as a public good. This means that most of the money a museum makes is invested back into the museum. They have staff members that manage the day-to-day operations of the museum, and there is a whole field of study around museum management called museology. Museums vary in size, type and focus. Some are specialized in art, history or science. Others are open-air museums, ecomuseums or even virtual museums. Some are private, and some are state-sponsored.
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. Museums play a significant role in the cultural landscape and contribute to human dignity, social cohesion, global equality and planetary sustainability.
When the term “museum” was first used, it meant a building where art or other cultural material was stored and displayed for visitors. This later evolved into a more holistic concept of museums that included open-air museums, art galleries, natural history museums and even online collections. In this way, museums have a broad scope to interpret their subjects, and there is no one right definition of what a museum is.
For many years, museums have struggled with the idea of what it means to be a museum. This has been especially true of museums that serve a community. Some have been accused of racism for displaying artifacts that have a controversial history, such as those seized during colonialism, or of misrepresenting non-western cultures through their collections. The old ICOM definition supported these practices by saying that a museum “acquires…the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and it’s environment.”
Today, a new definition of a museum has been approved by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) during an Extraordinary General Assembly in Prague. This new definition calls on museums to be more inclusive and to change the ways they work with communities. In order to do this, museums need to rethink how they acquire and display objects, how they educate people, and how they interact with the world outside their doors.