02 / 2019 ISSN 2520-2472 MUSEUMUSEUMMSS OFOF CITIESCITIES REVIEW REVIEW network.icom.museum/camoc/ CAMOC ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2019 “City Museums as Cultural Hubs – Past, Present and Future” Kyoto, Japan, September 2-5, 2019 DOSSIER: LISBON WORKSHOP • The AvAnT-GArde CenTre in MosCow • CiTy MuseuMs: refleCTions on A MissinG definiTion1 MUSEUMS OF CONTENTS CITIES REVIEW 28 28 26 22 25 17 03 THE CHAIR’S NOTE - A Human Library Against Upcoming exhibitions Joana Sousa Monteiro Prejudice and Intolerance 34 CONFERENCE Alert - After the CAMOC “Towards a Future conferences 04 MUSEUMS OF CITIES - CAMOC City Museum Watch” LISBON WORKSHOP Workshop 28 City Museums: Reflections on a - People First – Museum missing definition People 08 CAMOC ANNUAL 23 MUSEUMS AND LOCAL CONFERENCE 2019 ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PROGRAMME DEVELOPMENT “City Museums as CAMOC present in two recent Cultural Hubs conferences: Trento and – Past, Present and Future” Moscow Kyoto, Japan, September 2-5, 2019 25 MUSEUMS OF CITIES CAMOC Post-conference tour The Avant-Garde Centre in to Tokyo Moscow: Rediscovering the architectural heritage of 14 DOSSIER: LISBON WORKSHOP Russian avant-garde Gastev. How to Work - Towards a City Museum Watch 28 ExHIBITION Alert COVER PHOTO: Kyoto City. © Su San Lee on Unsplash Editorial Board: Jelena Savić (Editor), Layla Betti, Jenny Chiu, Renée Kistemaker, Gegê Leme, Marlen Mouliou, Susan Sedgwick, Joana Sousa Monteiro Supporting Team: Catherine Cole, Ian Jones, Chet Orloff, Eric Sandweiss, Rainey Tisdale, Jackie Kiely Design: Bingul Gundas FOLLOW US AT: Facebook Twitter Linkedin You Tube Instagram 2 THE CHAIR’S NOTE From the Chair Dear CAMOC members, This is a special issue of the CAMOC Museums of Cities Review, not only because it is the annual issue with a printed version, but also due to having relevant information on the two major events of the year for us: the Lisbon Workshop results, and the annual Conference programme. In addition to this issue, we prepared a special Museum Trends: Active Collecting and Activating edition of the Review on Japanese City Museums, as Collections; Museums of Cities, Trends and Definitions: a celebration of CAMOC 2019 being held in Japan, to Connecting Urban Past and Present, Responses to be distributed to the Kyoto conference delegates. The Urban Issues; and Museums of Cities and Sustainable dossier includes articles written about city museums Urban and Local Community Development. and other municipal institutions in Japan, like the city museums of Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo, related both On top of a great conference programme, CAMOC to the conference programme and the CAMOC post- organized a Post-conference tour to Tokyo, also conference tour. open to non-members, on the theme Rethinking the Relationship between the City and the City Museum, The workshop Towards a City Museum Watch was held comprising two different tours. in Lisbon, Portugal, during two very busy days in early May. One of the invited speakers at the Workshop, Among all our many partners, I would like to stress the Francesca Lanz, prepared a text for this issue, focusing relevance of having the Museum of Kyoto as the host on the attempts to grasp and define museums of of the off-site day meeting, with a word also to the cities, thus being directly linked with the main goal of museums and institutions that will host us at the Post- the workshop: the search for a common ground for conference tour, namely the Tokyo Metropolitan Edo- a conceptual framework that may allow us to further Tokyo Museum, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, identify city museums around the globe, embracing the Tamarokuto Science Center, the Implementation their diverse styles and scales. Or, as Joan Roca would Committee for New Concept “Ueno, a Global Capital of put it: to try to discover “how to detect a city museum Culture” and Arts Council Tokyo. in 20 minutes”. This work has been prepared while ICOM is discussing new museum definitions, about The organization of this big conference owes which Jette Sandhal’s speech was very enlightening. immensely to our local CAMOC expert, the diligent Chunni (Jenny) Chiu. The conference programme, CAMOC’s annual conference follows the overall theme the book of abstracts and the Review are due to the of the 2019 ICOM General Conference theme, only endless perseverance and competence of Jelena Savic, adapted to our core, city museums: City Museums CAMOC’s Secretary. as Cultural Hubs – Past, Present and Future. It will be held on September 2-5 in Kyoto, Japan. Modern city Last, but not least, we would like to share with our museums are commonly result of developments of readers that CAMOC had its elections for the new traditional municipal museums into more inclusive, board (2019-2022 mandate), which will take its duties diverse and participatory forms. The question in Kyoto, on September 2nd at the CAMOC Assembly, of tradition versus innovation will be present all following the Board Meeting on the September 1st. along CAMOC’s conference, as you can read on the We have an amazing team, comprising members programme published in this issue. coming from the previous board and newcomers, too: Catherine C. Cole (Canada), Jelena Savic (born Bosnia, We are very happy to be holding two joint sessions living in Portugal), Jenny Chiu (born Taiwan, living with other ICOM committees: one with ASPAC, the in Japan), Patricia Brignole (Argentina), Sarah Henry ICOM’s regional alliance of museums of the Asia- (USA), Jan Gershow (Germany), Gegê Leme (Brazil, Pacific region, on the important theme Cultural living in South Africa), Christian Nana (Cameroon), Tourism, City Sustainability and Museums of Cities; Michal Niezabitowski (Poland), Nicole van Dijk (The and another designed with the international Netherlands), and Joana Sousa Monteiro (Portugal). committee for historical houses, DEMHIST, on City and It is a promising board indeed, with impressive House Museums in the Context of Revising Museum city museum professionals coming from a large Definition, which will certainly provide us new ideas geographical scope, including North America and and interesting debates. Africa for the first time. Other sessions of the CAMOC conference will embrace Your contributions, suggestions and support are much paper presentations, ignite sessions and a workshop welcome, as always! on themes like Reconsidering Multiculturalism: Living with Different ‘Diversities’ in Museums of Cities; City Joana Sousa Monteiro 3 MUSEUMS OF CITIES - CAMOC Lisbon workshop City Museums: Reflections on a missing definition FRancesca LANZ* When Joana Sousa Monteiro invited me to attend the very heterogeneous and take form of picture galleries, Lisbon workshop, she told me about her intention to archaeological museums, archives, as well as historical hold a truly interdisciplinary working session to reflect museums. Civic museums are usually strongly rooted upon city museum concepts and definitions that might in the local context and connected with local identity, be useful in an operative way. I found this request being part of a network of city’s cultural institutions stimulating and well expressed and started to think such as libraries and schools, with which they often how I could contribute and what I could put in for this work with. Their link with the local history and identity discussion. is also related with their historical development and the origins and nature of their collections, which usually I am trained as an architect. I am from Italy – a come from donations by city’s private collectors as well country that is, sadly, underrepresented in CAMOC. as from former local religious orders. For about 8 years now, I have been widely researching on city museums: by reading, attending CAMOC and Italian civic museums came into being in the ICOM conferences and other academic meetings and eighteenth century and mainly spread in the workshops, writing papers, debating with colleagues nineteenth century, around the decades of the and museum operators and visiting city museums Unification of Italy: in this period, cities created these around Europe and beyond. Looking back, I realised museums to strengthen the link with their local that, actually, the question of what a city museum is traditions and proudly affirm their specific identities, and how it can be defined has always been there – which were going to be absorbed into the new nation- either as a recurrent topic for workshops and panels or state. It is widely recognised that the ratification of as a kind of background issue. the laws that cancelled many religious orders, and the consequent devolution of their goods to the state and So, I started wondering why. What does this mean? the municipalities, marked a very significant moment Why don’t we have a shared definition yet? in the history of Italian civic museums. In particular, Hypothesis 1. The blurred difference between City the laws enacted by the new kingdom of Italy in 1866 Museum and city’s museums and 1867, granted a significant number of paintings, sculptures, books, and other artistic and historical Maybe we lack a definition of what a city museum is objects to civic and provincial museums and libraries. and what it is not because of the blurred difference These laws caused one of the largest dispersions of between an actual City Museum and other city’s Italian heritage, which was de-contextualised, sold — museums. mainly outside the country — or ruined. On the other hand, they undoubtedly favoured the establishment Indeed, one can say that almost every museum is, in of a peculiar bond between the local museums that a way, “a city museum”, as far as it is located in the received part of these goods and the surrounding city, held by the municipality, dedicated to the city’s cities and regions, where the heritage originated inhabitants, exploring a facet of city’s history. from. This worthwhile relationship made it possible to preserve and pass on a cultural heritage otherwise In Italy, for example, the English term “city museum” doomed to get lost, and marked the evolution of civic is often (mis)used for civic museums: museums whose museums as institutions deeply rooted in the territory collections belong to the municipality.