Eighth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum 7-9 AUGUST 2015 | HOSTS: NATIONAL COUNCIL OF SCIENCE MUSEUMS, INDIA & INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR THE INCLUSIVE MUSEUM | ONMUSEUMS.COM Common Ground Publishing and the International Institute for the Inclusive Museum gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the following for the 8th International Conference on the Inclusive Museum, New Delhi: Rashtrapati Bhavan Ministry of Culture, Government of India International Council of Museums, Paris National Council of Science Museums National Museum of India, New Delhi National Gallery of Modern Art of India, New Delhi Aga Khan Trust for Culture Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage Sanskriti Pratishthan – Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi British Council, India International Institute for the Inclusive Museum Australian High Commission, New Delhi International Coalition of Sites of Conscience Pacific Asia Observatory for Cultural Diversity in Human Development Federation of International Human Rights Museums Asian Museum Institute International Curators Forum Sahapedia Commonwealth Association of Museums Cover Image: CELESTIAL CINEMA Science and Movement (Cinema) of the Venus (Celestial body) as it crosses the face of the Sun. 6th June 2012 from 5.23 AM to 10.22 AM. National Science Centre, New Delhi, National Council of Science Museums India. Eighth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum “Museums as Civic Spaces” National Science Museum, Delhi | New Delhi, India | 7-9 August 2015 www.onmuseums.com www.facebook.com/OnMuseums.CG @onmuseums | #CGMuseum International Conference on the Inclusive Museum www.onmuseums.com First published in 2015 in Champaign, Illinois, USA by Common Ground Publishing, LLC www.commongroundpublishing.com © 2015 Common Ground Publishing All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the applicable copyright legislation, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher. For permissions and other inquiries, please contact [email protected]. Designed by Ebony Jackson The Inclusive Museum onmuseums.com Dear Delegate, Welcome to the Eighth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum. The conference is a cross-disciplinary forum which brings together museum practitioners, researchers, and teachers to discuss the nature, objectives and future shape of the museum. The conference is held annually in different locations around the world, each selected for a particular relationship to an innovative museum or local museum practices. The conversations at this conference weave between the theoretical and the empirical, research and application, institutional pragmatics and social idealism. In professional and disciplinary terms, the conference traverses a broad sweep to construct a transdisciplinary dialogue which encompasses a broad variety of perspectives and practices. In addition to the Inclusive Museum Conference, Common Ground also hosts conferences and publishes journals in other areas of critical intellectual human concern, including aging, food studies, diversity, learning, sustainability, and the interdisciplinary social sciences, to name several. Our aim is to create new forms of knowledge community, where people meet in person and also remain connected virtually making the most of the potentials for access using digital media. We are also committed to creating a more accessible, open and reliable peer review process. Alongside opportunities for well-known academics, we are creating new publication openings for scholars from developing countries and for researchers from institutions that are historically teaching-focused. We would like to invite conference participants to develop publishing proposals for original works or for edited collections of papers drawn from the journal which address an identified theme. Finally, please join our online conversation by subscribing to our monthly email newsletter, and subscribe to our Facebook, RSS, or Twitter feeds at http://onmuseums.com/. We are also proud to announce Scholar, created in an association between Common Ground and the University of Illinois. If the social glue that holds together Facebook is ‘friends’ and the stickiness of Twitter is having ‘followers’, then the common bond created in Scholar is ‘peers’ working together in knowledge producing communities. We call this a ‘social knowledge’ space. Not only can you join the Inclusive Museum community in Scholar, you can also create your own knowledge communities and use Scholar as a learning space, with a strong focus on peer-to-peer dialogue and structured feedback. For more information, visit www.cgscholar.com. This is the longer story of the Inclusive Museum Conference. The shorter story includes a phenomenal amount of careful planning and thinking on the part of Professor Amareswar Galla, Executive Director of the International Institute for the Inclusive Museum; Mr. Ganga Rautela, DG of the National Council of Science Museums, India; Mr. Rama Sarma Dhulipati, Director of the National Science Centre, Delhi and several of their colleagues in the field of museums in India. On a more personal note, many thanks to thank our Common Ground colleagues who have put so much work into this conference: Ebony Jackson, Emily Kasak, Izabel Szary, and Jessica Wienhold-Brokis. We wish you all the best for this conference, and hope it will provide you every opportunity for dialogue with colleagues from around the corner and around the world. We also hope you will be able to join us for the Ninth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum, to be held at the Freedom Centre in Cincinnati, USA, from 17 to19 September 2016. Yours Sincerely, Bill Cope Director, Common Ground Publishing Professor, Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA FOREWORD India is on the cusp of an unprecedented museum development. The cultural and linguistic diversity of India, the world’s largest democracy, provides a challenge and an opportunity for exploring new pathways for developing museums as vibrant civil society agents, for community building and intercultural understanding. The key concern across the world remains whether museums in the 21st Century are chameleon like or relevant and responsive cultural institutions that are grounded in social, economic, cultural and environmental futures of sustainability. What are the key cultural indicators for appreciating the transformations of museums as civic spaces with regard to the new Sustainable Development Goals and the post-2015 UN Development agenda that is imminent for adoption in the UN General Assembly as we conference here? The International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the Inclusive Museum Knowledge Community are tireless advocates for developing museums as civic spaces for all people, irrespective of their backgrounds, legacies and inheritances. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen succinctly states the reality that ‘…. we all have many affiliations and associations, and each of these identities fit into the way we lead­­—and can continue to lead—our lives, without displacing other identities.’ (Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, 2007). In this context, developing critical museological discourse has become imperative for addressing reflective, revealing and confronting narratives to unravel the layers of significances in our collections, past and contemporary, for bringing people and their heritage together. The Inclusive Museum Knowledge Community facilitates an ongoing dialogue and with this aspiration throughout the year – registration is for the three days here face-to-face, and then for the next year on line. Participatory democracy is facilitated in the digital domain through triangulating Collections – Connectivity – Communities. Collections are embedded knowledge systems with layers of significance. Connectivity provides the means for engagement and interactivity through the affordances and possibilities in the digital domain. Stakeholder communities, in all their meanings, manifestations, cultural understandings; and the multitude of publics and audiences remain in the liminal space between the collections and connectivities – the aspirational Inclusive Museum. The 28th General Assembly of ICOM, meeting on 17 August, 2013, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, resolved to ‘Evaluate the extent to which programs and ICOM activities are in accordance with the ICOM 2010 Cultural Diversity Charter of ICOM adopted in Shanghai and implement a policy of gender equality as an integral part of the strategic directions of ICOM’. The Inclusive Museum Conference is a partnership activity contributing to these professional endeavours of ICOM. Several pathways inform the processes of the Inclusive Museum Knowledge Community. Through case study analysis and facilitated dialogue participants explore in the next three days as to how museums can transform their operations and practices to meet the changing and complex needs of society in a rapidly globalizing world. What are our current museological approaches in addressing cultural and linguistic diversity and should they be re-envisioned? What practices and strategies do we employ to be or become inclusive? What are the challenges and benefits? How can museums measure their relevance and impact using the ICOM Cultural Diversity Charter? There are many dedicated people that have made this Conference and the Knowledge