The Future of Museums of Cities
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THE FUTURE 1 OF MUSEUMS OF CITIES Book of Proceedings CAMOC Annual Conference 2018 September 2019 www.camoc.icom.museum 2 ISBN: 978-92-9012-471-9 THE FUTURE OF MUSEUMS OF CITIES Camoc Annual Conference Frankfurt, Germany, June 2018 Book of ProceeDings 3 Conference anD workshop organizer: ICOM CAMOC Special thanks to our partners ICOM Germany Historical Museum Frankfurt 4 INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR THE COLLECTIONS AND ACTIVITIES OF MUSEUMS OF CITIES © Copyright by CAMOC: Design: Cover photo: ISBN: 978-92-9012-471-9 This e-book is available for downloaD free of charge from the CAMOC website () or upon request at: 5 Editor: Revision and proofreaDing 6 CONTENTS 09 JOANA SOUSA MONTEIRO 10 KEYNOTE ARTICLE 14 JOAN ROCA I ALBERT PART 1: THE CITY MUSEUM AND ITS PROFESSIONALS 28 CHET ORLOFF 32 ANNEMARIE DE WILDT 37 CRISTINA MIEDICO 42 SIBYLLE DIENESCH PART 2: IN THE MAKING 50 VALERIA PICA 58 ORIT ENGELBERG-BARAM AND ELAD BETZALELI 65 TONER STEVENSON AND PAUL BARTON 72 PAUL SPIES AND BRINDA SOMMER 76 LARS DE JAEGHER AND PAUL VAN DE LAAR Skyline 88 JAN GERCHOW 95 SONG INHO 7 100 JOANA SOUSA MONTEIRO 106 ELENA PÉREZ RUBIALES AND THE MUHBA TEAM 116 NICOLE VAN DIJK PART 4: OTHER CASE STUDIES 123 IVAN GRINKO 131 INGA SARMA 136 CHUNNI CHIU (JENNY) 144 PEDRO PEREIRA LEITE AND JUDITE PRIMO 8 9 FROM THE CAMOC CHAIR JOANA SOUSA MONTEIRO CAMOC Chair, 2016-2019 For the last three years, CAMOC has undertaken the edition and publishing, on a digital format, of the proceedings of the annual conferences, thus granting free access to all committee members and other interested people the majority of the texts and discussions held at the conferences. We have done it for the conferences held in Mexico City (2017) and now for the one in Frankfurt (2018). Te choice of a theme and a place for 2018 was mostly focused on the concerns on the defnition of a city museum and new goals: the theme was Te Future of Museums of Cities and the conference was kindly hosted by the Frankfurt Historical Museum, which was reopened in 2017, afer a decade of substantial and impressive remodelling work. Tis book of proceedings remains the major memory from the Frankfurt conference: nineteen articles written by museum professionals and scholars from Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia and Australia, who were generous enough to share with us diverse aspects of the stimulating panorama of the city museums around the world, including innovative thinking, new successful practices, mistakes to avoid, and cross-disciplinary approaches. As it is stated in the opening text by our keynote Joan Roca, “the vindication of the “right to the city”, as formulated in 1968 by Henri Lefèbvre and inscribed in the Final Statement of the UN Habitat III conference in 2016, has become as fundamental as it was half a century ago, if not even more so”. Troughout the four chapters – Te city museum and its professionals, In the making, State-of-the-art city museums and their practices, and Other case studies – you can fnd interesting material about the quest for relevance in the contemporary city for inhabitants and guests, the framework of the city museum within cultural and urban policies, dreamscapes, urban skylines and power, how museums improve well-being, the museumifcation of the city space; sustainable futures for city museums, or active collecting and other participatory practices in city museums, among many other topics. In the period between the conference in Frankfurt, in June 2018, and the present moment, CAMOC has organized a workshop in Lisbon on the defnitions and goals of city museums in the world today, and now we are preparing for the ICOM General Conference in Kyoto, which will include an exciting CAMOC programme at the main conference centre and the Museum of the City of Kyoto, in addition to a promising post-conference tour in Tokyo. I hope you will get the most out of this book of proceedings to conduct your own research and museum work. We will keep counting on your active collaboration. 10 PERSPECTIVES ON THE FUTURE OF MUSEUMS OF CITIES The Book of Proceedings Editor About this publication Museums of cities are as much about the cities’ present and future as they are about their past. Terefore, all CAMOC conferences contemplate the future of cities and their museums. Back in 2008, our meeting in South Korea focused specifcally on the theme of City Museums and the Future of the City. A decade later, with the increase of the number of museums of cities and rapid urban growth, we felt the need to focus again on the questions of the state of museums of cities worldwide, of their present and models for the future. In response, CAMOC dedicated its Annual Conference 2018 to new directions and new challenges for museums of cities and urban heritage. Under the umbrella theme of Te Future of Museums of Cities, we also focused on the new roles and responsibilities of this type of museums, the ways in which museums of cities can contribute to a more sustainable urban future, and the need for museums of cities to constantly redefne themselves in light of all these challenges. Our annual meeting was hosted by the Frankfurt Historical Museum, recently reopened afer almost a decade-long process through which it was remodelled as a modern city museum for Frankfurt. Tus, the choice of our meeting place resonated strongly with the conference theme. Tis Book of Proceedings is the tangible outcome of our Frankfurt meeting, and it contains nineteen original texts which refect on diferent aspects of museums of cities’ future. Te authors come from four continents – Europe, North America, South America and Asia – and from city museums (and other related professional contexts) of diverse styles and scales. In recent years, CAMOC has mainly focused on digital publications, aiming to reach even more museum and city researchers, experts and others interested in urban life. Hence this volume is available as an e-book, free of charge, with the copyright conditions defned by the CC BY-NC-ND license.1 Te structure and the main themes Two keynote speakers and twenty-nine other speakers contributed to our Frankfurt conference, yet not all of them were able to submit full papers. Tus, the structure of this Book of Proceedings diverges from the thematic subdivision of the conference. Te volume begins by an opening article that sets the tone for the organization of the subsequent texts, an organization that places those texts on four diferent chapters. Te introductory article by Joan Roca I Albert (MUHBA, Barcelona, one of the keynote speakers) is centred on the Rethinking the city and the city museum. Te author, emphasising the particular position of city museums between cultural and urban policies, systematically explores the requirements for the city museums of the 21st century, which are needed to fulfl their potential to create knowledge and heritage, social and cultural cohesion of metropolises and renovation of tourism practices. Te frst chapter, entitled Te city museum and its professionals, contains four other texts which, by following the line of exploring requirements for the city museum of the future, focus specifcally on the people. Chet Orlof proposes a curriculum for future city museum experts, refecting not only on a possible programme in museum and urban studies but also on “people skills”, highly relevant for the profession yet mostly taught beyond the feld of museum education. Resonating with these observations, Cristina Miedico explores human mediation in museums through a captivating story of Oldspeak versus Newspeak, reminding us of its continuing relevance in the era of extraordinary technological advancements. Also in this chapter, Sibylle Dienesch examines how to optimize organizational models for city museums, 1 For non-commercial purposes, this license lets others distribute and copy the article(s), and include them in a collective work (such as an anthology), as long as they credit the author(s) and provided they do not alter or modify the article. More information at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. 11 while Annemarie de Wildt illuminates the issue of (self)censorship in museums. On the frst conference day, Annemarie organized a brief interactive session dedicated to this matter, together with Francesca Lanz, and encouraged exchange of experiences on this important subject among CAMOC members. Te second chapter of this volume looks into several museums of cities (and their projects) in the making. Valeria Pica exposes the case of L’Aquila, a small town that sufered a severe earthquake in 2009, which, curiously, lead to the discovery of new historical layers that now need to be interpreted and presented. Te author also develops their theory on museum identity. Orit Engelberg and Elad Betzaleli present the challenges in the planning process for development towns museums in Israel, which involve painful and controversial issues linked to narrative, representation and collective memory. Diferent cultural contexts impose diferent challenges and concerns – at another world’s end, in Australia, Toner Stevenson explores museums as institutions that can contribute to society through both health and cultural benefts and looks into quantifable methods for assessing the component of “well-being” provided by museums. Paul Spies and Brinda Sommer explore the idea of participative museum through the project for the Berlin exhibition at the Humboldt Forum.2 City museums of Rotterdam and Ghent are working together for their upcoming Skyline exhibition, planned to be on display in Rotterdam in 2020 and Ghent in 2021. In their article about this joint project, Paul van de Laar and Lars de Jaegher write about the background research process and the exhibition concept, which not only takes into account a historical refection on skylines in the past, their diversity and geographical distribution, but also aims at engaging visitors in state-of-the-art debates on the future of urban developments and urban life.