Best in Heritage 2015

The Best in Heritage

Š

Projects of Influence 14th Edition

Dubrovnik, Croatia, 24 - 26 September 2015

The Best in Heritage

Š

Projects of Influence Dubrovnik 24 - 26 September 2015 14th edition

in partnership with Europa Nostra with the support of Creative Europe

and ICOM Endowment Fund Dedicated to the memory of Kenneth Hudson (OBE) & Georges Henri Riviere

contents

Contents

What Is “The Best In Heritage”?....................4 The Unique Annual Survey Of Museums, Heritage And Conservation Achievements....5 Heritage and Crisis?

Some recommendations................................6 1 > The Utopia That Comes True: baksi Museum, bayburt, turkey

Baksi......10

2 > PASSAGE

- From The Rust-Zone Into A New Miskolc............................................14 From a rusty city to a new miskolc, MISKOLC, HUNGARY

3 > From

Horse Barns To The White House: A Prairie Museum Wins The National Medal.......................................................18 sam noble oklahoma museum of natural history, norman, united states

4 > Could

An Anti-Exhibition Function As A Good Exhibition?.....................................22 NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM RIJEKA, rijeka, croatia

5 > Science

Museums' Contribution To Society Empowerment: A Case Study....26 MUse - museo delle scienze, trento, italy

6 > Public

30

Participation At Ningbo Museum....

ningbo Museum, ningbo, china 7 > Forming

A Harmonious And Elegant Whole.......................................................34 Horta Museum, Bruxelles, Belgium

8 > Ilon`s

Wonderland - Back To Childhood................................................38 ilon's wonderland: "i am always here. ilon", haapsalu, estonia

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9 > A

New Life For Bergamo’s Teatro Sociale.....................................................42 teatro sociale, bergamo, italy

10 > Rereading

The Past, Sharing The Present, Dreaming The Future.............46 le Musées de la civilisation, Quebec, Canada

11 > How

To Open A Museum With No Experience, No Investment And Nothing To Exhibit...............................................50

little museum of dublin, dublin, ireland 12 > 17th

Century Mural Painting Rediscovered Through Restoration......54 dragomirna church's 17th century frescoes, sucueva, romania

13 > The

World Of Art Can Be Reached By Many Roads...........................................58 National Gallery of Denmark, copenhagen, denmark

14 > Exhibition

Design - The Interface For The Future.............................................62 Miraikan (The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation): "Songs of Anagura", Tokyo, Japan

15 > Inclusion Leads To More Inclusion.......66 Museum of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 16 > In

Pursuit Of A “Moving” Exhibition Display....................................................70 Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, nagoya, japan

17 > The Best Hidden Museum In Žanis Lipke Memorial, Riga, Latvia

Riga........74

18 > The

Lines Of Torres Vedras: A Remarkable Restoration.......................78 Historical Route of the Lines of Torres Vedras, Lisbon, Portugal

contents 19 > A Source Of Inspiration.........................82 Textile Centre Haslach and the Museum of Weaving, haslach, austria 20 > Creating

An Atmosphere To Suit The Narrative Of The Novel..........................86 Museum of Innocence, Istanbul, Turkey

21 > Connecting

Cultures In The Historical Past........................................................90 Restoration of the Saryazd Citadel, Yazd, Islamic Republic of Iran

22 > The

Memory Palace, A Report On The Principles And The Choices..................94 National Archives: The Memory Palace, the hague, The Netherlands

23 > A

Palace Of Culture And A Space Of Leisure...................................................98 Nanjing Museum, Nanjig, China

24 > Creating

Extraordinary Learning Experiences With The Power To Transform............................................102 Children's Museum of Indianapolis, indianapolis, United States

25 > Work

With Volunteers, A Special Challenge.............................................106 Saurer Museum, Arbon, Switzerland

28 > A

Victorian Vision For The 21st Century.................................................118 Victoria and Albert Museum, london, United kingdom

Presenters..................................................122 Keynote speaker and Moderators.............129 Financing Heritage Institutions in Times of Scarcity.......................................................131 Conference Exhibition................................132 The Excellence Club...................................134 All Roads Lead To Exponatec Cologne......140 Best in Heritage Exponatec Programme..141 Public Memory Institutions And Their Idealist Objective........................................126 Civil Society in Action for Heritage............158 ICOM, Speaking The Language Of Museums................................................160 24th General Conference of ICOM, Milano 2016 ............................................................161 Partners and Patrons page .......................163 Impressum ................................................164

26 > Creation

Of The New Cultural Product As A Means To Revive The Intangible Cultural Heritage.................................110 state museum-reserve "rosotv kremlin", yaroslav region, russia

27 > An

Excellent Model To Discuss Europe’s Complex And Sometimes Painful History And Heritage...........................114 The Coen Case, Hoorn, The Netherlands

ISSN 1849-5222 Zagreb, 2015.

THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 5

introduction

What Is “The Best In Heritage”?

Professor Tomislav S. Šola Director, European Heritage Association The conference has been created as a constant and yet changing event: constant in its format and changing in its contents. It is good that the introduction to it may well stay the same as it proves to be an appropriate response to a world growing more and more competitive. What changes is surely good: a constant elaboration of the criteria of quality.

We keep presenting it. Fourteen years ago when we started the conference, the emerging concept was excellence. It was a good guess. Now we contribute to an emerging heritage profession and, indirectly, provide arguments for its science of public memory. We decided to set up the world’s annual scene to present a handpicked choice of ambitious projects, - those that gained a prestigious award in the preceding year, either as new to the scene or reconceptualised and refurbished. In 2014 some fifty competent juries, national, international or, indeed, coming from five continents, sifted several thousands of projects applying for recognition of their quality. To almost 300 of them they have granted some kind of recognition (see our website for the list). We have chosen twenty-eight of them, holders of the most prestigious awards and/or being the most convincing, to represent this vast achievement. Our role is to capitalize on this effort further by spreading the good news about genuine creativity and professional excellence. What we offer is a fairly good, global survey of projects of influence. So far the audience awarded the best formal presentation. During the years of 6 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

this practice, we have noticed that it is usually the project perceived by the professionals present as the most influential among all others and thus we renamed the award: The Most Influential Project. The laureate is given a trophy by the organizer and is invited to present the project at Exponatec Cologne fair and other international venues.

By experience we know that there is some doubt still, - is competition legitimate in culture? Culture is about criteria, about evaluation, - not competition. Correct, and, indeed, - award schemes are helping this to happen as selecting "the best", means elucidating and employing certain criteria of quality evaluation. Perfecting professional standards in servicing public needs and the increased public and media visibility is the aim of all awards. Our world is increasingly one of numbers, quantities and the frenzy of superficial change. Therefore, to counteract and correct this, the conference is after quality, excellence, inspiration and the ideals of a perfect profession of public memory, with all its prestigious, important occupations and increasingly accomplished civil sector.

This year’s team with Ida Marija, Koraljka, Morana, Elvis, Ana, Ivan, Eugen, and Domagoj is led by Luka Cipek, our project manager. We carry on as a low profile NGO with the best possible performance a devoted team can achieve, maintaining the unique atmosphere our participants create.

Advisory Board The Best in Heritage This conference connects the dismembered ranks of this increasingly important but often fragmented sector concerned with the same general objectives. It also connects the public and private, the trained professionals and activists and believers in the cause of heritage. The partnership with Europa Nostra, supported by the European Commission, is a strategic link to the civil sector while ICOM, our main and foremost patron, ICOMOS and ICCROM, connect us to the professional world. ICOM’s Endowment Fund provides support for this publication. It is however the City of Dubrovnik and Dubrovnik Museums which are a true guarantee of our success.

The conference still enjoys the symbolic help of the Croatian Ministry of Culture, the agency that fully financed it at the very beginning.

The conference is gaining momentum and influence. The recent signing of Memoranda of understanding with the ICOM Endowment Fund and with the Chinese Museums Association is an encouraging sign of recognition.

The Media partnership with ASEMUS and collaboration with Izi.Travel testifies to the vitality of this already well-established global professional event.

It is increasingly important to have an orientation and examples when trying to increase the quality of our products. The Internet is an epitome of impenetrable masses of knowledge where one needs guidance to profit from it. The Best in Heritage is such a search engine. Besides providing real-time and di-

rect experience, the presentations in the conference became unavoidable tools for professional training. The Advisory Board is very much supporting the constant innovations to the programme in spite of often scarce resources.

This year we have introduced a post- conference event “Financing Heritage Institutions in Times of Scarcity”. We think that the assistance of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Croatia in mediating Dutch experience in financing museums in times of scarcity will be an interesting occasion for most of the participants. If it proves as useful as we expect, we shall willingly support its continuation into the next editions of the conference.

Our overall aim is to create inspiration within an agreeable and useful event and to forge creative links, - tasks in which the magic of Dubrovnik will undoubtedly help us again.

THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 7

introduction

The Unique Annual Survey Of Museums, Heritage And Conservation Achievements

keynote address

Heritage and Crisis?

Some recommendations Carl Depauw General Manager, Art Museums Antwerp, Belgium Since 2002, every year, in Dubrovnik, we learn about excellence in culture and heritage worldwide. Awarded projects are inspirational towards methods in developing quality and high standards, and differ from each other in the way they relied in this on wide audiences, different kinds of heritage, used methods and funding. There are huge projects and smaller ones, but all are – in the end and as a result - of high quality. And all of them give inspiration and thus are examples of good influence.

On April 6th, 2013, National Committees of ICOM of European Countries did an appeal to the European Parliament and Commission and to the Parliaments of European Countries to support Culture and Museums to face the global crisis and build the future.

In Lisbon, they formulated three priorities and ten objectives to face the crisis and promote the values of museums and heritage.

We – museum and heritage workers - asked through our ICOM representers, what we expect policy makers to do.

In times of cultural, socio-economic and financial crises, museums and heritage partners too find themselves in challenging situations due to restricted budgets and program cuts. Circumstances are different worldwide, and in certain cases, it is admirable and encouraging to see that investments in cultural projects remain, or at least are not neglected. They are considered a part of what is necessary to fulfill an elementary human need: the need for culture, beauty and history. Worldwide more and more new museums are developed, as a symbol of a necessity and even brotherhood of people and cultures. It gives nearly the impression that the need for this becomes greater as our world becomes more and more globalized, despite a global crisis. Or maybe a more controversial statement: the deeper a crisis, the greater the need for cultural investments.

In the meanwhile, most of us – museum and heritage workers – did what we needed to do. Sometimes with less creative actions, such as selling collections, closing galleries, restricting our staff, cutting the budgets for research and collecting and restoring, … In some cases there is a belief that when changing the guards dramatically, problems will be solved. Directors for 20 of Italy’s leading museums, including the Uffizi in Florence, the Galleria Borghese in Rome and the Accademia in Venice were dismissed, and with an advertisement in the Economist and other publications, Rome announced its first-ever international search for museum directors, part of a shake-up at its major art and archaeology institutions. The changes are intended to give directors more influence over budgets and ease the way for them to raise private funds to help offset drastic cuts in state funding.

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keynote address

of crisis: where is the comfort of the visitor, what do they experience, what does he or she learn, …

So, a global crisis forces us as cultural managers to think about how to deal in a smart way with that, and how to respond to several challenges. Worldwide, we find good practices of methods or trends that can offer recommendations in how to deal with the crisis.

Because, e.g. they generate income (not only for the museum but often also for the related components, the so-called socio-economic return), they spread the investments (of people and/or money) over several partners or/ and reduce the expenses, they increase audiences and give a good solid platform of acceptance of the project or are good examples of sustainable investments. There is hardly a single solution, however there’s a tool box of THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 9

> mAS (ANTWERPEN, BELGIUM): A BEST PRACTICE COMPETING THE CRISIS WITH CULTURAL INNOVATION

And thus, curiously enough, is explained as a result of the crisis the fact that many new projects and museums arise worldwide. But also, every year again, the number of visitors to museums and heritage sites and participants increase. Referring to a recent blockbuster exhibition where visitors comfort was absent due to overcrowded galleries, and the directors’ reaction was acceptance because this kind of situations happens when you are successful. In some cases, as a response to the crisis, forced competition is driving us towards a distorted balance between quantity and quality. Sometimes we experience a focus on the number of visitors, we do not take account of the quality of the visitor’s experience. But quality and quantity can go together. Reaching a greater number of visitors can be considered indeed as competing the crisis, but it contributes to another kind

keynote address

recommendations that can be adapted to a specific situation.

In this respect I refer to (and bring examples) some good and above all reachable practices, which have developed good results in many cases. They deal with smart partnerships, the relation with the city and/or landscape, the market and clear commitments.

All in all, they’re about being creative and innovative, and are about inclusion.

First, since a few decades, but increasing the past ten year, museums and heritage programs are part of public-private partnerships (PPP). They offer good opportunities for museums and private partners to join forces and benefit from cooperative efforts, driven by a shared belief in the need to invest in culture. Such partnerships are increasingly common, but differ according to the circumstances of their development and the results attained, ranging from ad hoc and short-term partnerships to more sustained initiatives. The partnership goes further than donating money: it is often a shared belief in chasing and promoting shared values and even ethics. Culture, arts and taking care of heritage are examples of good and responsible citizenship, and private partners are proud to associate themselves with a reliable institution such as a museum. Co-operation may go further: explore the vast way of interesting cases of co-operation, how they contribute to each others mission, and thus share funding, know how, people and even audiences.

Second, since the Guggenheim Bilbao it has been demonstrated that a newly built museum integrated in often so-called difficult or almost abandoned city areas can contribute in a substantial way to added values for the city, the residents and visitors. Through cultural tourism and creative industries, the new projects converse a district, trans10 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

forming it back into a bustling part of the city, attractive for residents, companies and visitors, tourists and locals alike. Often, the building has already become one of the city’s most popular and visible landmarks.

Renowned architects are eager to write and design the history of the city. The landmark nature of the museum’s construction with no such endeavor and a specific identity, the location, architecture and innovative ambitions laid out in terms of museology and attracting broad new audiences, and the overarching mission of the project often make private partners aware of being part of history by supporting the ambitions of the new museum and the city. So, link your museum with the city, the village, its landscape and surroundings, and thus it is more than only a building housing collections. The cultural infrastructure is as inevitable as a tunnel or a bridge, a railway station, a hospital, school, … all necessary elements to complete the daily life. And be aware: cities worldwide become more and more important and powerful. It has forced some trend watchers to come up with a statement that city mayors will become the most important and influential world citizens in the forthcoming decades.

Third, it can be considered that art and heritage are a result of a market with a need to create. Make that connection, and link your museum/collection/stories with your nearest audience/market and make it accessible, recognizable and reachable. Dare – in some cases - to depart from the market, and find out how valuable and profitable connections can be made between collections, stories and the market. Go for building bridges with local communities, invite them to use the space and bring presentations or activities.

Don’t be afraid of so called amateurism with this communities: museum professionals are there to help them, and share the professional know how in how and why to collect, do research, preserve and present. Let

Fourth, make a clear commitment with governments, local authorities, businessmen, local communities, financial as well as ideological. We need each other to let things work out well: so mind a gap between institutions and public authorities. To achieve this, become close partners with governments and public services. Be creative in defining new objectives and setting up new business models. As a result of a solid cultural commitment from public authorities, private partners were attracted by this ambitious plan to meet goals embedded in the local community. Meanwhile, you may develop alternative ways of finding financial resources. And give them a good scope and visibility, be pragmatic and flexible rather than straight and stiff.

a single scope. So much is possible and we love to do as much as we can, following our own choices and speed.

These recommendations may be considered as my personal TOP 5, but there is and can be done much more. E.g. do not exaggerate with what you ask from other museums: fees, high costs for transport, insurance, couriers: how can we stop with making things (almost) impossible for each other? Go for collection dynamism and find out about the advantages of collection mobility, local and international.

Or, short and quick, but highly important: invest in social media: it is highly effective, and extremely cheap!

Once expressed by a notorious Belgian businessman and lover of the arts and culture, every crisis indeed has its opportunities.

Thus, culture is competition, but the heritage and museum entreprises differ from others in the way they do not have a goal to exclude others. It is more about being inspirational and complementary. But then, we need to act on this. Think about your museum or project as a democratic act, generating inclusion and as such being responsive and engaging.

Through this social inclusion, crisis may have an impact but is not capable to cut the museum and heritage ideals of sharing beauty and knowledge of the past and the present for our next generations.

Fifth, dare to experiment and innovate, stimulate cross overs, with dance, music, theater, even yoga and what else more that indicates a museum is no longer a place of static objects but a place of meeting and dynamism.

Go on your way to be a integrated museum that makes use of the advantages of a heritage web where you have many thinkable kinds of heritage with archives, sculpture, movie, painting, applied arts, ‌. It is parallel to a trend whereby people are no longer limited to do one thing or being interested in THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 11

keynote address

lower culture meet higher culture and vice versa. Museums by 2030 should be radical and participative institutions in the heart of their diverse communities and they should be working in partnership with different kind of organizations to develop formal and informal learning, health and wellbeing, skills and social change. They should turn this expertise outwards and become social facilitators, centres for public creativity and local enterprise. But also dare to invest in youngsters. They are the future, our cultural long life insurance. And maximalise the co-operations with volunteers when opportunities are there.

The Utopia That Comes True: Baksi

baksi Museum, bayburt, turkey European Museum Forum / Council of Europe Museum Prize 2014

Feride Çelik Director, baksi Museum ≥ baksi museum bayraktar village bayburt turkey ≥ +90 458 247 34 38 ≥ baksi@baksi.org en.baksi.org ≥ twitter: @BAKSIMUZESi

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1.

Baksı Museum, settled on a hilltop overlooking the Çoruh Valley in Bayburt in Northern Anatolia has new suggestions for the art world and questions the dependency of contemporary art on large centers, as well as the relationship between culture and production, art and craft, traditional and modern.

In Baksı Museum, a high quality contemporary art collection, an anonymous paintings collection that includes all major samples and original examples of local handcraft are housed side by side. Above all, the museum is a cultural center of interaction that brings traditional and contemporary art together for artists and researchers… However, revitalizing a shattered cultural scene due to high levels of immigration and developing projects to contribute to the sustainability of cultural memory, organizing workshops aiming to improve women's employment in the region and enabling the local people to reach financial resources to sustain their lives in the area they live in are the main focus of the Baksı Culture and Art Foundation. .

Contemporary Art And Tradition Hand In Hand Baksı Museum, which spreads over 4 acres includes exhibition halls, workshops, a conference hall, a library and a guest house.

Its opening exhibit included the work of 16 contemporary artists. These artists came up with a wide range of artwork focusing on “tradition and art” from painting to statues, video and installation. Some of these works are today on display in the Warehouse-Museum.

Baksı Museum’s 2012-2013 events were held under the theme of “Distance and Contact”.

Four different curators were at work for four different areas, namely art, design, fashion and food.

The contemporary art exhibit that was put together with young artists was planned to be open to all art disciplines. Fourteen young talents from the industrial design and architecture departments from the universities were brought together for this project.

The curators made their selection of the artists and artworks based on the dialogue Baksı would have with the local people. Young designers created their original designs after studying Baksı in terms of economy, ecology, social structure and cultural data.

The curators and artists of Fashion Design designed items and accessories both for exhibition and marketing purposes to provide financial support for the budget. They incorporated the textile materials manufactured by the local women in Baksı workshops in their special collections.

Culinary Design aimed to study and regenerate the traditional culinary culture of the museum region through cooperation with local women.

Contribution To The Economy And Social Life On the one hand Baksı Museum opens into discussion concepts like center and periphery, art and society, tradition and modernity, cultural limits and diversity, existence and ‘returning home’ and on the other hand, aims to revive the economic life in Bayburt, one of the regions with highest immigration rates in Turkey.

To cope with this, the Baksı Contemporary Art Workshop provides an environment suitable for work for the artists from all around Turkey and the world.

Building textile workshops aiming at continuous manufacturing while encouraging THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 13

especially the women and the youngsters to take part in economic life was part of the museum's plans since the beginning; and was a priority for the Baksı Culture and Art Foundation which brought the museum into life.

Alternative sources of income in the region are scarce which causes a continuous emigration from the countryside. To cope with this, the Baksı Culture and Art Foundation launched two projects in 2011-2012, namely “Weaving the Future” and “Anatolia in the Warp” the former aiming to revive the manufacturing of a local textile product: ehram and the latter focusing on reviving, modernizing and spreading rug manufacturing as an alternative source of income.

Vocational Training In Museum-Workshop The “Weaving the Future” project of the Museum, which became part of the State Planning Organization’s Social Support Program, focuses on vocational training.

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With improvements in its curriculum and additional phases, one of the most important aspects of the project will be the reinterpretation of the traditional textile product (ehram) based on today’s needs and expectations. The Baksı Culture and Art Foundation aims to enrich this local textile product with a contemporary design approach and on the other hand, it aims to become a facilitator by providing special marketing support.

Through the project considered a “model practice” for the region, it is aimed to include the women in the neighboring villages into economic life as active manufacturers.

Artists’ Weavings Baksı Museum realizes its mission of bringing the traditional and the contemporary together, the local and the universal through various projects.

Art Fest For Children While constantly developing its relationship with its surrounding, the Baksı Museum puts

great emphasis on children’s activities in its events calendar. “The First Bayburt Students’ Art Fest” which will take place in June 2013 is a result of this approach…

And The Plans For The Future…

The Festival calls on the entire Bayburt region and brings primary and elementary school students together with art through painting contests, kids’ art workshops and various shows. The fifteen most successful students in the contest will be rewarded a year-long scholarship by the Baksı Culture and Art Foundation.

Baksı Museum, a new and different center of interest in the region, would like to become a pioneer in culture and nature tourism. On the one hand, the Museum is restructuring its rest house and on the other hand, it is launching village pensions. These efforts aiming to promote the region are expected to contribute to tourism and the socio-economic development of the region.

Baksi “Museum Of The Year” Baksi Museum won “Museum of the Year Award” for 2014, given by the European Council Parliamentary Assembly. After the voting of the European Council Parliamentary Assembly, Commission of Culture, which was realized on 3rd of December in Paris, Baksi Museum won the most prestigious museum award. The Museum will exhibit Joan Miro’s bronze statuette, the symbol of the competition, for one year in Bayburt.

In the upcoming period, Baksı Museum will launch a new initiative for culture tourism.

In the coming period, Baksı Museum plans to hold national and international workshops, summer academies and a comprehensive statue symposium.

Projects addressing the women, children and youth and big biannual exhibitions will also continue. All these efforts aim to reach out to larger crowds and to increase the contribution in particular to the women, children and youth.

THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 15

PASSAGE - From The Rust-Zone Into A New Miskolc PASSAGE: from a rusty city to a new miskolc MISKOLC, HUNGARY EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award 2014 GRAND PRIX

Edina Mato PROJECT MANAGER ≥ North-East Passage Cultural and Academic Association 3526 Miskolc Testvérvárosok útja 8. 9/1.

Hungary ≥ www.atjarokhe.hu www.kamaprojekt.hu utanamsracok.blogspot.com/ ≥ atjarok@gmail.com matoedina@gmail.com ≥ facebook: eszakkeletiatjaro.egyesulet, KAMAprojekt, utanamsracokprojekt

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2.

Our programme on one hand focuses on the preservation and raising awareness of the intellectual cultural heritage and on the other hand on the revitalisation and presentation of built heritage. We consider that the exploration of cultural heritage is paramount: several historical researches have been conducted and are being conducted in Miskolc and in Pereces (which is now part of Miskolc). The research included making interviews and photographs, collection of relics, making short films and archiving and taking pictures on design drawings.

The Átjáró (Passage) project is a multi-level, complex programme consisting of several subprojects. Most of them have been concluded, yet some of them are still ongoing.

The present programme focuses on the implementation of the most important mission of the association in which we worked together with several partners Our objective is the development of local, Miskolcian identity so that the citizens can appropriate and identify the „sense of place” of urban areas and spaces in order to understand the private history of the not so distant past of the city (social history- history from underneath) and to bring its history closer to people, thereby canonizing it as an alternative urban history and to help getting over the trauma following the collapse of the heavy industry and to help making a step forward preventing it from becoming a taboo. With this we would like to support, strengthen our long-term objective i.e.: Miskolc should constitute a perspective for the youth living here. In contrast to the large-scale emigration, „brain-drain” constantly present since the change of regime the youth should try to plan their future in the city despite the difficult economic situation.

Thus the programme promotes the development of urban identity so that the concept of the town and its history is revalued in the mentality of the community and fresh pictures replace displeasing and traumatic ones as the elements of mental cultural heritage.

Main activities, products: researches, exhibitions, training programmes and publications (booklets, postcards, activity-based booklets, DVD ROM, periodical) furthermore the renovation of the Pereces Open Air Stage involving the community, organisation of virtual tours, making films and publication of studies, organisation of workshops, networking, participation at scientific conferences and forums.

Thanks to our programme we managed to capture the mental cultural heritage of Miskolc (including Pereces and Vasgyár), the local stories, and a substantial part of the local history of lifestyles in a way which enabled that students could join in the process

THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 17

of exploration, preservation and presentation. From the feedbacks that we receive we experience that the products which were created in the framework of the programme ( book illustrated with pictures, series on local history, exhibitions, websites) are references for many city-dwellers regarding the preservation of the values of the past.

In the case of products, programmes in the process of formation, the involved youth volunteers not only had the chance to present their own ideas but they were also involved in the implementation and decision-making, thus the activity became internal and own one which means a multipled effect compared to a sheer information transfer.

Together with raising awareness to the importance of cultural heritage, about the importance of voluntary work and civil organisations became evident. Some of the involved students tried to conduct their own interviews. Consequently, as they managed to talk with strangers, relatives and acquaintances, the method of oral history could become an experience for them (several partic18 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

ipants from secondary school chose history as a major subject).

As part of the oral history research we could involve many old people who live or lived in Miskolc and Miskolc-Pereces: they were keen on speaking about the past, they gave interviews and pictures to us (during the events many proposed pictures, so we could select from an even wider range of archive pictures for the exhibition). The publications and the exhibitions strengthened the importance of local historical consciousness in the participants, while interest could be generated in other people towards the past (and present) of the mining colony.

In Pereces we managed to achieve the desired change, more volunteers took part in the programme than expected and we managed to carry out a far larger-scale renovation.

In Pereces, in parallel with the renovation of the stage relying on the help of volunteers, the volunteers founded a new civil organisation composed of local associations. Fur-

thermore they managed to save and renovate the restaurant and miners’ club located next to the stage.

In our programme the strengthening of the European context consists of the foundation of an international workshop and preparations for its further extension.

Workshops pave the way for disputes and exchange of ideas with the help of which we provide a frame for a discussion which aims to form European citizens with higher awareness via issues such as European memory, common European values, European laws and interest enforcement.

Together with the participating organisations we would lay the foundations of a network across several countries of the European Union which is based on mining sites, organisations operating in industrial centres with the aim of preserving local traditions ( e.g.: museum, brass-band, choir) or revitalisation (researchers, community-builders, environmentalists etc.)

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From Horse Barns To The White House: A Prairie Museum Wins The National Medal

sam noble oklahoma museum of natural history norman, united states Institute of Museum and Library Services National Medal 2014

Michael A. Mares director ≥ Sam Noble Museum 2401 Chautauqua Ave. Norman, Oklahoma 73072. USA ≥ contact@ou.edu ≥ samnoblemuseum.ou.edu ≥ facebook: SamNobleMuseum Twitter: @samnoblemuseum 20 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

3.

The Sam Noble Museum has deep roots in Oklahoma. It began building natural and cultural history collections in 1899, when Oklahoma was still a territory. Collections were lost twice in the early 1900s due to fires, yet Oklahoma never gave up on the goal of having a museum that “brings the world to Oklahoma and takes Oklahoma to the world.”

Over the next 100 years, the collections grew at phenomenal rates, reaching more than 10 million specimens and objects today.

For over a half-century, collections were housed on the University of Oklahoma campus in attics, basements, abandoned barracks, and horse stalls. Most were stored in buildings that would burn down in fewer than seven minutes. These were among the worst storage conditions in the United States. In 1983, a new attempt (after many failed efforts) was made to construct a building to house the growing and endangered collections and to provide research, exhibit, and classroom space. The project took seventeen years.

In 2000, the museum moved into a 198,000-square-foot facility on a 40-acre site at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

This broadly supported project was completed with funds from the city, state, private donors, and foundations. Its 50,000-squarefeet of exhibits and galleries trace Oklahoma’s natural and cultural history back more than a billion years. Almost all objects and specimens illustrating this rich history are from Oklahoma.

The museum has a dual role as the designated museum of natural history for Oklahoma, and as a teaching and research unit of the university. Its mission is based on scholarship and stewardship of Oklahoma’s heritage that is held in trust for the public. Museum

curators and staff are dedicated to research, education, collections preservation, and service to the public.

Budding Scientists The museum’s educational programs are built on a base of information from its research and collections activities. Programs serve a broad range of geographically, socio-economically, and culturally diverse communities. The museum’s public programs include community events such as Science In Action & Object Identification Day, Spring Break Escape (when a week of science programs serve thousands of young people), holiday celebrations, and the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair.

The museum offers workshops for adults, families, youth, and volunteers, including fossil field trips, after school programs, summer camps, and teacher workshops.

Programming helps address the lack of easily accessible science education opportunities that are available to Oklahoma youth.

Educational programs such as Meet the Dinosaurs and Web of Life inspire thousands of students on field trips each year. Multiple no-cost outreach programs serve communities across Oklahoma. ExplorOlogy®, a series of educational outreach programs gives students and teachers an authentic handson science experience. Within ExplorOlogy®, Paleo Expedition annually affords 12 Oklahoma high school students the opportunity to join museum paleontologists in real research as they unearth fossils and collect field data at locations in Oklahoma and in other states. The students receive training in the laboratory and the museum’s collections before departing on a motivating field experience.

ExplorOlogy® the museum’s most far-reaching educational activity not only THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 21

≥ museum aerial / welch creative

Native Roots

> clash of the titans exhibit of oklahoma dinosaurus

caters to budding scientists, but fosters a unique, symbiotic relationship between educational outreach and museum research.

ExplorOlogy® has served more than 53,000 students from over 150 schools in 55 (of 70) counties across Oklahoma since its launch in 2007. Most ExplorOlogy® students continue on to university studies and two participants won prestigious Gates Millennium Scholarships.

Native Americans and the Museum Oklahoma was designated as a forced destination for Native American tribes from throughout the United States during the midto late 1800s. Tribes were removed from their homelands and relocated in Oklahoma to make new lives within what was designated as Indian Territory. As a result, Oklahoma today has the greatest diversity of Native peoples of any state in the U.S., as well as the largest number of Native languages spoken by tribal members. Many of these languag22 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

es were unwritten and government policies of the 1800s and early 1900s forbade the use of Native languages by Native people. Thus many of the tribe’s original languages are endangered as elders who still speak their language die, taking with them the memories of their Native tongues.

The Sam Noble Museum, which maintains a vast collection of documentations and resources for Native languages, is committed to supporting language revitalization with programs and partnerships. The museum traces the 30,000-year history of Native people in Oklahoma, beginning with the archaeological evidence of humans in the state and ending with an examination of what it means to be Native American in Oklahoma today. Revitalizing and renewing languages is a long-term commitment on the part of the museum to individuals, communities, and the larger public.

Native languages in America are sitting on two precipices. Some are endangered, their

final Native speakers dying without passing on enough information to educate future generations. Others are on the cusp of revitalization, gaining momentum through innovative new ideas designed to interest and engage new language learners. To help foster this revitalization, the museum hosts the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair in which thousands participate each year, a unique event in which children and young people interpret their Native languages into creative performances, art, poetry and prose. All works are recorded and archived in the museum’s collection dedicated solely to language revitalization, so that researchers may access these interpretations of Native language.

A Long Journey The museum was a proud recipient of the national award for heritage preservation in 2004 and the American Alliance of Museums accreditation in 2014 for the fourth consecutive time. It is one of only 1,005 accredited museums in the U.S. According to the Accreditation Report, a major strength of the museum is the visionary leadership. Committee members noted how a very strong team of staff members works collaboratively to create state-of-the-art exhibits and programs. They also complimented the strong research culture, curators, and the unique exhibit experience, all of which enable the

On May 9, 2014, the Sam Noble Museum made history as the first Oklahoma institution to receive the National Medal for Museum and Library Services, the nation’s highest honor conferred on museums and libraries for service to their community. Winners were selected from nationwide nominations of institutions that demonstrate innovative approaches to public service, significantly exceeding the expected levels of community outreach. Mrs. Michelle Obama presented the award in a ceremony at the White House.

It has been a long journey for the museum across three centuries. The barns and stables that were the original museum buildings are now only a memory. The museum has evolved significantly to meet the needs of its collections and its community. By creating a new space for learning and research, providing innovative educational resources, and conserving our cultural and natural heritage, the museum has come to occupy a vital position in the community. Moving forward, the museum will continue to dedicate its collections and resources to serving the many communities of Oklahoma’s museum of natural and cultural history.

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> first lady michelle obama presents the national medal to the sam noble museum ≥ native american students in traditional costumes use their native language in poetry, song and literature

museum to surpass what many university museums are able to achieve.

Could An AntiExhibition Function As A Good Exhibition?

4.

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NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM RIJEKA rijeka, croatia croatian museum association prize for permanent exhibition 2014

Željka Modrić Surina DIRECTOR ≥ nAtural history museum rijeka lorenzov prolaz 1 51000 rijeka croatia ≥ 00385 51 553 669 ≥ info@prirodnoslovni.com www.prirodnoslovni.com

The Natural History Museum Rijeka is a small regional museum founded in 1876 and opened to visitors in 1946. The Museum continuously researches and systematically collects the natural heritage of the wider region so it currently holds around 90.000 specimens organized in minerals, rocks, fossils, plants and animals collections some of which have international importance. It currently employs 12 people, of which 9 are museum experts.

Since its establishment, the Museum has been situated in a family villa of count Negroni dating from the beginning of 20th century.

Although the building itself is beautiful and situated in the city centre, it was not built for museum purposes and hides certain disadvantages. The exhibition area is broken into small rooms connected with halls and staircases, the visitor flow is not clear and the access for visitors with disabilities is not easy.

Because of the architectural limitations, but also in order to give visitors a more dynamic experience, the Museum’s permanent exhibition is organised in modular parts, using the particular exhibition rooms, hallways, staircases and even the surrounding garden to present parts of the permanent exhibition, each presenting different collections. Parts of the permanent exhibition share the general idea and messages, while each offering different and fresh experiences.

The Museum takes special care in communicating and bonding with its audiences through exhibitions and rich educational programmes, always trying to find new and innovative ways and viewpoints in doing so. The educational projects for children, families, students and adults with a special interest in natural sciences and nature protection are especially popular, so more than 150 workshops, 40 lectures and 200 children's birthday celebrations are held each year. Different art exhibitions and performances, con-

certs, special events or sleep-over nights are less numerous but well appreciated by the public. This continuous effort in elaborating programmes and services suiting the needs and expectations of mostly the local public has helped build strong bonds between the Museum and the local community.

However, teenagers and young people up to 25 years of age very rarely visit the Museum if it is not organized as part of their school or university education, as shown by the visitors survey. An opportunity to reach out to this important group of visitors arose from working on a project MUSEUMCULTOUR (“Adriatic museums enrich cultural tourism”) co-financed by the European Union through the IPA Cross Border Cooperation Programme.

Within the Project a new part of the permanent exhibition covering the thematic of undersea life diversity in Kvarner bay was set up with the use of modern museographic techniques and technologies.

A team of museum experts consisting of curators (Milvana Arko-Pijevac, Marin Kirinčić and Marcelo Kovačić, museum educators (Željka Modrić Surina, Anita Hodak), documentalist / technical menager (Borut Kružić), museum technician / sound expert (Lado Bartoniček) and financial manager (Tea Mirth) working on the exhibition has been set up. Curators Milvana Arko-Pijevac, Marin Kirinčić and Marcelo Kovačić wrote a very detailed exhibition concept stating the themes and topics to be covered, stories to be told together with a complete list of exhibits to be presented, according to their relevance. The exhibition was to present the undersea life diversity in Kvarner Bay and important habitats and life communities, with the emphasis on conservational issues and provoking the visitors to feel the need to protect the marine ecosystem as well as to understand it. It was targeting not only the usual audience of the Museum, consisting mostly of children, THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 25

families, preschool and school children and adults with a special interest in natural history and nature protection, but primarily to teenagers and young people with an interest in technology and virtual reality.

Based on the public procurement procedure a renowned exhibition designer Klaudio Cetina was selected as a creative director of the Project. He elaborated and proposed a Mood board and a Conceptual design of the exhibition following the concept, accepting agreat number of exhibits to be presented in a rather small area and contrasting with the hard, scientific, almost industrial structures of glass and steel metal shelves covering the floor and walls to soft and fragile beauty of sea creatures and fluidity of sea water. The concept was very demanding and almost experimental in its approach to the visitors: the exhibits would be in the dark, enlightened only if the visitor chooses to see them and willingly turns on the light operated by the 26 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

motion sensors. Then the exhibit could be seen in all its beauty but naked, stripped of any interpretation and only if the visitor wishes that he or she could read the information on it using a sensor triggered smart phone application. Also, the concept supposed active exploring of the undersea world by using different senses, like touching and feeling different textures, smelling, hearing the sea animals and the sea itself, seeing the colours in different depths etc.

Following this ambitious concept, and after thoroughly discussing the details, especially the approach to the different target audiences, technical and multimedia solutions and the financial frame a final design and interpretation plan were developed by the whole team working together with the authors and the creative director. Although the whole team agreed on the final design, a couple of questions remained: How will this anti-exhibition where nothing is actually exhibited at

first sight actually be accepted by the audience and different target groups? Are the technological solutions that we chose going to work properly? Will it all be finished in line with the deadlines? And, finally, will we be able to stretch the budget to cover all that we want to be delivered?

After seven months of hard work of all the contractors and all of the Museum employees, sometimes (and some nights) all together in the exhibition room, our anti-exhibition was opened to the public at the end of 2014.

We have received very positive feedback from our visitors, especially the teenagers and young people that liked exploring and feeling the sea with the help of new technologies, recorded a 10% increase in the number of visitors and a 50% increase in the time spent at the exhibition within the first six months.

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Science Museums' Contribution To Society Empowerment: A Case Study muse - museo delle scienze, trento, italy european Museum academy / micheletti award 2014

Michele Lanzinger Director

≥ muse museo delle scienze corso del lavoro e della scienza 3 38122 trento italy ≥ museinfo@muse.it www.muse.it ≥ facebook: musetrento twitter: @muse_trento 28 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

5.

MUSE, the newest science museum of Italy, embodies the current generation of the natural history museums at international level.

It opened its brand-new flagship building just two years ago (end of July 2013) and the outcomes thus far, as for innovative museological approach, audience development and new programmes offer, provide the museum community with a remarkable case-study, interesting to be evaluated by both the insiders and the decision makers.

MUSE is the development of the very traditional natural history museum settled in the18th Century by the local Municipality of Trento (a little town in the NE Alpine area of Italy) to preserve collections essentially including Alpine mountain natural specimens.

Since the nineties, the new staff of the museum started to provide the public with innovative temporary exhibition formats and with a number of educational programs tailored to different curricula, thereby becoming increasingly an active reference point, capable of attracting the attention of the public and engaging the community in science and society issues. Ten years after, the opportunity given by the urban redevelopment plan of a hitherto deprived post-industrial area on the outskirts, was the trigger for the development of the MUSE cultural project.

Ten Years Long Story A cultural driver was needed for this coming neighbourhood, a distinctive attracting pole.

The idea was to let a cultural institution be the enlivened "hearth" and by then, the natural history museum was the very dynamic entity, which attracted citizens by offering multiple participative science communication projects. In the new premises, the museum would have shown its collections in a different light, providing its visitors with a

contemporary narrative about the mountain environments.

Some figures The investment for MUSE (building + exhibition design) was 100 million Euros. The yearly operational budget amounts to 9.8 million Euros (data referred to 2014; 42% are self-generated revenues).

Before the “new deal” the museum’s permanent staff counted on 23 people, including a few with University degree. The team has constantly grown since: today the total staff is 250, corresponding to 180 FTE. MUSE is also the central hub of a territorial network of 9 small local science museums, including a well-organized field research station at the edge of the pluvial forest in Tanzanian Eastern Arc, where community based biodiversity researches are carried on.

Our Goal The motto which summarize the philosophy of MUSE: think globally, act locally. As the narrative of the museum shows, the specific story of each different mountain environment is situated in its global context and refers also to similar environments around the world. MUSE mission statement underlines the ultimate goal: “To interpret Nature, starting from the mountains, through the eyes and with the tools and applications of scientific research. To allow everyone to face the challenges of the contemporary world, to stimulate curiosity for science and technology, to share the pleasure of knowledge, giving value to science, innovation and sustainability.”

Form Encounters Content The motto and the mission statement are skilfully translated into the architectural THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 29

≥ Archivio museo delle scienze / photo roberto nova

Foreword

forms and the content displayed in the museum. Both the building and the exhibition interior are designed by architect Renzo Piano: externally the roof slopes form recalls the skyline of the surrounding mountains.

Internally, the light and clear arrangement of the galleries and their contents offer an object-rich exhibition tour. The “low gravity” principle, i.e. the focus on the displayed objects or specimens and not on their supports, is mostly visible in the iconic 18 meters high central void area. This calls to mind the idea of free exploration, what any visitor is invited to do. The architecture allow people to immediately perceive the quality of the open space, to freely make a journey through its comfortable, well-lit galleries.

The Impact Of Numbers By the end of the 21st month after opening, MUSE issued the number 1 million admission ticket. Quite a big result for the city that counts only 115,000 inhabitants (the whole region 450,000). During the second year of operation, visitors went up 20% thanks to school classes in Spring, and tourists in 30 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

Summer and Winter. Family audience during weekends made up for the rest of the year; only 27% of the visitors were local inhabitants. Undoubtedly MUSE changed the appeal of the city: Trento is now considered a tourist destination, mostly thanks to the science museum. In a recent marketing research study 89% of retailers in town admitted that the MUSE has positive effects on the city economy (41% rated it “considerable”), the 43% reports an increase in the turnover of sales, and the 35% refers of special offers promoted with MUSE.

A Step Forward The future of MUSE, of course, is still to be invented. It will definitely count on the major strengths and key factor of success: the capacity and enthusiasm of MUSE staff, including the highly qualified science research team. This staff allows MUSE to have a voice in the current science international arena (the patent for a molecular taxonomic identification field tool is currently submitted).

Researchers contribution merges “first hand science knowledge” with the skills of the

experienced educational and the exhibition staff, providing information and inspiration to the community.

Conclusion To face new challenges, to set new goals we need to move away from the reputation of being “a nice place”. Science museums are often perceived as pleasant, joyful places to spend some time, whereas they should be considered “relevant”. To be relevant entails going beyond the educational role and the family-oriented leisure approach. It means becoming a part of the on-going societal dynamics by supporting “culture oriented” incisive actions - science centres and museums are “cultural actors” (not direct economic agents). We need to promote public participation, actively engage them in any choice.

We need to enhance information access, public deliberation, cohesion, responsible consumer choice and production. All this is not only a matter of Pedagogy, it’s strictly linked to the policy agenda, to a sound strategy for our growing society, for our future.

social environment foster the wiser use of community resources; • Lifelong learning, because it helps to develop the learning society; • Social cohesion, for the acknowledgement of differences can be mediated by a common transitional language, i.e. the scientific method; • Local identity and the Soft power to support citizen’s awareness “to be the essential part” of their territory, to enhance the role of science museums, to contribute to increasing the visibility and the reputation of the territory by promoting the above mentioned.

At MUSE we daily commit ourselves to become relevant for our community, we're earnestly working for the cultural welfare of our community, and we wish to continue to build on this positive experience, thus hopefully contributing also to the European science museum field.

≥ ≤ Archivio museo delle scienze / photo claudia corrent

There are few key-words to summarize these needs and translate them into possible actions: • Innovation and support of RRI, because it is the area of the EU flagship projects for the next decade; • Sustainability, because sharing knowledge and wider participation are better than rules and laws; • Entrepreneurship, even by the “gaming approach”, because serious games and playrole approaches inspire enterprises set ups; • Welfare, because in our rapidly changing world participation, commitment and knowledge about our physical, technological and THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 31

Public Participation At Ningbo Museum

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ningbo Museum, ningbo, china chinese Museum Association - most innovative museums award 2014

Qi Yingchun acting director

≥ ningbo Museum 1000 shounan road yinzhou district ningbo, zhejiang china ≥ www.nbmuseum.cn nbmuseum@163.com

6.

In Ningbo museum, “public participation” has been regarded as our most important aim and duty, ever since opening in December 2008. Through innovative museum practice and the build-up of a museum public participation theory, Ningbo Museum became the youngest member among “National First-Level Museums” in China in 2012, and the laureate of the “Most Innovative Chinese Museums” in 2014.

Transition In Idea During the construction of Ningbo Museum, two terms have been brought up to promote public participation: “Grand Resource” and “Citizen’s Museum”. “Grand Resource” focused on the integration in the use of social resources on a national and international scale; “Citizen’s Museum” focused on making Ningbo Museum into a service-oriented institute for citizens.

In 2012, the new term “Common People’s Museum” replaced “Citizen’s Museum”, and in 2013, Ningbo Museum put forward “Museum: People’s life style” as our main idea of development. The interpretation of this idea lies in two aspects: firstly, the museum should serve not only a specific group of visitors, but all members in society. Secondly, besides visit and/or museum activity participation, the museum should become an indispensable element in the life style of the public.

Innovative Museum Practice Following the transition of ideas on museum public participation, innovative measures have been applied in all aspects in the museum operation.

1. Management Ningbo Museum established a solid funding system. About 60% of the operational fund is provided by the Ningbo municipal government, 20% comes from the local district government, central government provides about 10%, and the rest is raised by Ningbo Museum itself from donations and fund raising campaigns for special projects.

KPI (Key Performance Indicator) has been applied to evaluate staff performance. Every employee’s KPI grade is given by himself, his group, museum directors and other employees and the final result is associated with his income. Such museum KPI evaluation combines daily work duty with longer term working objectives, helps to motivate museum employees and enhance efficiency.

2. Exhibition In Ningbo Museum, we consider exhibitions as our most important service to the public, and we encourage the public to decide our special exhibitions.

Since 2012, we began a regular survey named “Special Exhibition on your vote”, a questionnaire that studied the audience’s interest and demand for special exhibitions.

The survey greatly encourages public participation in the actual museum operation. It’s been warmly received by our audience. Not only the demand of special exhibitions, but a great number of ideas and suggestions for museum practice are collected. Since then, every year, half of the special exhibitions in Ningbo Museums are decided according to the result of this survey. Thus, Ningbo Museum has successfully changed itself from a “supplying museum” to a “demand-driven museum”.

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> museum volunteer

Having answered the question of “what the public want to see” in the museum, Ningbo Museum then focuses on the problem of “how well the public receives an exhibition”. Museum exhibitions, especially cultural relics and art exhibitions, tend to hold a lofty profile, requiring an adequate background knowledge in history and art to understand. They put an invisible pressure on the audience, and even keep the audience away sometimes. To solve this problem, Ningbo Museum makes sure to curate every exhibition in the eye of the common visitor. We “transform” difficult terms and expert knowledge into easy and acceptable words and language. Images, videos and other supportive exhibition materials are widely used. Guided tours, lectures and educational activities are organized as well. Feedback on every special exhibition has been collected and analyzed to improve future exhibition projects.

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3. Museum Service The Museum is a prime culture service organization. The quality of the museum service is an essential tie to relate the museum with the public. In Ningbo Museum, we set up a service system with the aim of becoming an indispensable element to people.

Internally, we focus on the improvement of the museum public service and the construction of a comfortable museum environment. Using the experience of other service-oriented organizations, like hotels and tourist sites, we established a new museum service code and applied a “star-rating” service system.

Ningbo museum is very easy to access.

We’re free admission, and open all yearround. Besides exhibitions or activities, visitors are welcome to come just to see our building, to have a cup of coffee, or just for a

walk. There are various sitting areas in and around our museum, and free-wifi is provided in all public areas. The building itself is a great piece of art, and the surrounding area is garden-like. As a whole, Ningbo Museum has created a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere in and around it, inviting the public to interact with the museum.

Externally, the build-up of a volunteers’ team allows the public to participate in the museum service. Now in Ningbo Museum, there are 820 registered volunteers and 1380 student volunteers providing service in various sectors. Ningbo Museum also promotes museum volunteers on a large scale. In 2009, Ningbo Museum promoted the founding of the Volunteers’ Committee of the Chinese Museums Association, and the Committee Secretariat has been settled in Ningbo Museum. In 2010, Ningbo Museum hosted the “International Museum Volunteers Forum” during ICOM’s 22nd General Conference. In 2013, Ningbo Museum published the “Development Program of Chinese Museum Volunteers”, which has become the guidance for other museums and institutions.

4. Activities & Projects Ningbo Museum carries out its social educational duty mainly by organizing various activities catering to participants of different ages.

We design several categories of explorative or experiential activities for a young audience. “Touch of Special Exhibitions” is a series of activities that go with special exhibitions, inviting school students to interact with the exhibition for a better experience or understanding. For example, we organized a masquerade during the “Splendid Venice” exhibition. “The tradition of the Chinese Holiday” is a series that is held during traditional Chinese holidays for younger kids to practice

typical customs of each traditional holiday, in order to revive old traditions and cultural memories. Like in the Dragon Boat festival, children learned to make “Zongzi”-a special rice-pudding for this holiday - by their own hands. “The experience of Intangible cultural heritage” is another series that presents intangible culture heritage in the region to the youth by performances, lectures, or displays.

Since Opening in 2008, Ningbo Museum has by now organized over 140 activities for the youth with a total of 15000+ participants.

“Ningbo Museum in Mobile” is a program to send exhibitions to schools, residential communities, army garrisons, companies and far-away suburbs, in order to reach a wider range of people. There is a particular part of the “Ningbo Museum in Mobile” program called “Special love for you” that we sent exhibitions to schools for deaf & mute, and mental-handicapped, helping children with special needs become part of our museum community. By March 2015, “Ningbo Museum in Mobile” has visited more than 230 schools, companies and residential communities, benefiting a total of 200,000+ people.

From “Grand Resource” and “Citizen’s Museum”, to “Common People’s Museum” and then to “Museum: People’s life style”, the transition of idea reflects Ningbo Museum’s continuous effort to encourage comprehensive public participation. With innovations in inner management, service, exhibitions and activities, Ningbo Museum has now established a public participation system that helps us become an indispensable part of people’s life style, as well as an element of social harmony.of people’s life style, as well as an element of social harmony.

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Forming A Harmonious And Elegant Whole

Horta Museum, Bruxelles, Belgium EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award 2014

Barbara Van der Wee Architect, Professor ≥ Hortamuseum 25, rue Américaine 1060 Brussels Belgium ≥ www.hortamuseum.be info@hortamuseum.be ≥ b.vanderwee@barbaravanderwee.be barbara.vanderwee@asro.kuleuven.be ≥ facebook: Horta-Museum 36 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

7.

The facades display clearly the different functions: this can be seen, for example in the bow window and balcony, two components of the traditional townhouse and in the large windows of the second floor draughtsman’s studio, in the single window frame that provides light to the employee’s ground-floor offices and the sculptors’ basement atelier.

Horta’s ultimate goal was …”to create a personal oeuvre in which social, architectural and structural rationalism were combined”... , as he wrote in his Memoires. He conceived his house and studio as a total work of art.

Characteristic is the innovative plan layout, the fluidity of the spaces and the visual interrelation between spaces and levels as well as the open stair construction, crowned by a stained-glass dome, which allows light into the hearth of the home. Moreover Horta audaciously combined industrial and luxury materials, blending them with a craftsman’s skill. In the dining room the use of steel in construction and decoration is combined with glazed brick and various marbles and woods.

After 20 years of occupation Victor Horta sold the buildings to two different owners; one of them remodeled the studio to adapt it as a home.

In the 70-ties the house and studio were purchased by the municipality of Saint-Gilles and the two buildings were reunited and furnished as a monographic museum.

In 1963 they were the first Art Nouveau buildings to be protected as a historic monument in Belgium and in 2000 inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as one of the four major townhouses of Victor Horta.

Finally in 1989 we (Barbara Van der Wee Architects) developed a global plan for the rehabilitation of the complex as a house museum and carried it out in 6 restoration campaigns over 20 years.

Preliminary Research And Global Conservation Plan Our research into the buildings’ history, undertaken in collaboration with Françoise Aubry, enabled the chronology of construction to be understood and to determine the buildings’ period of splendor from an architectural and historical viewpoint. For this it was necessary to fully measure the house, the studio and the garden, and to compare Horta’s original plans with more recent ones.

Thus, it could be established that, Horta himself had enlarged the house and the sculpture workshop on the garden side and had reformed the front façade of the studio to include a garage. After the buildings were sold to two different owners, the studio especially suffered from considerable transformations.

The results of the research were assembled on the synthesis plans of the building history, demonstrating clearly which parts of the building phases were still preserved in 1989.

This information turned out to be crucial in the decision making process of the conservation project.

Ultimately the historical study determined that the heyday of Horta’s house and studio complex should be situated between 1908 and 1911, after the various enlargements on the garden side yet before the addition of the THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 37

≥ stained-glass dome above open stair construction allows light into the hearth of the house , Photo Bastin & Evrard

Victor Horta (1861-1947), Belgium’s most famous Art Nouveau architect, lived and worked in Brussels. In 1898 he built his house and architectural studio in the 19th century neighborhood of the municipality of Saint-Gilles. He designed them as two independent buildings, with separate entrances, yet connected on the ground and second floor.

> façades of the house and studio before and after restoration, Photo Bastin & Evrard

garage. This was the period set as the historic frame of reference in the master plan for the restoration. As a result, it was decided that all transformations carried out after 1911, were to be dismantled.

Then the master plan defined the spaces with high heritage value, particularly the entire family home and the workshop’s first and second floors, as the house museum. Other functions, such as accommodation spaces for the visitors, Horta’s personal archives, an impressive library and office rooms were housed in zones that had already been reformed or had little architectural value.

Restoration Campaigns As soon as we removed the modifications, added after 1911, the original volume of the sculpture workshop at the studio’s garden side was rebuilt and the garden facades and roofs were restored.

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Then, the ground floor and cellar of the studio were furnished into the visitor’s reception with a cloakroom, museum shop, sanitary facilities and exhibition spaces.

During a third campaign the restoration of the facades intended mainly to repair the initial situation of the studio was carried out: the large windows of the draughtsman’s workshop, the single window frame on the ground-floor offices and the sculptors’ basement atelier, as well as the iron fence in front were reconstructed. Furthermore all the ironworks of both facades were repainted in an ochre color, as it was the oldest layer of paint, that was revealed.

Concerning the reconstruction of the window frame on the ground floor, it is important to mention that a detailed study of Horta’s 1898 plans and an old photo from the museum archives enabled us to establish the original composition of the large window as well as to define the drawing of the extremely com-

plex fence in ironwork. The creation of this window, along with its corresponding railing, was the result of a close collaboration between excellent craftsman.

At a certain moment diverse structural problems had been identified on the main staircase of the house, mainly due to the overload of more than 45,000 visitors a year. Therefore a fourth campaign consolidated the interior structure of the 8 landings and timber joins of the stair stringers in an invisible manner using metal plates glued to the timber stringers and reinforced by stainless steel pins. This restoration phase made it clear that the museum’s very success had disastrous consequences for the building and resulted in reducing the museum’s capacity and limiting the staircase use.

Due to the above mentioned restorations, visitors can finally visit Victor Horta’s house and studio, relishing the atmosphere and organization of both family and professional life.

As a conclusion, to prepare a 20 year restoration project, profound preliminary research is indispensable as well as a global conservation plan within which different sub-projects can be defined and executed in phases. However, the success of a long lasting building process, also depends on the flexibility and the mutual confidence and respect of overall stakeholders and contractors. Therefore I am sincerely grateful to all team members who made this project an exceptional learning experience.

≥ visual interrelation between spaces on the bel-etage: view from the music room towards the dining room, Photo Bastin & Evrar

Following the consolidation works, we restored the glass roof and stained-glass skylight over the stairwell as well as the mural paintings.

During the last restoration campaign the main rooms of the house were decorated into their original setting and with original materials: special attention was paid to wall paintings, fabric wall coverings, curtains, furnishing, light fittings and even technical installations. These works lasted over 10 years and were especially carried out in the bathroom, the petit salon, the winter garden and in the kitchen area.

Concerning the domestic area it is important to mention that, after we removed the former housekeeper’s apartment, we revealed enough evidence to make the refurnishing of the original kitchen possible. Also the small elevator, which connected the former housekeepers’ living room with the bedrooms in the attic, was dismantled and a new staircase was built to the original model.

THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 39

Ilon`s Wonderland Back To Childhood

8.

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ilon's wonderland: "I am always here. Ilon", haapsalu, estonia estonian museum award 2014 for permanent exhibition

Lina Valdmann manager ≥ iloni imedemaa sa haapsalu ja laanemaa muuseumid kooli 5, 90502 haapsalu estonia ≥ imedemaa@salm.ee www.ilon.ee

Ilon Wikland spent her childhood in Haapsalu and from here she escaped the war, reaching Sweden at the age of 14. While creating illustrations to Astrid Lindgren’s books, Ilon often subconsciously used the ruins of Haapsalu medieval castle, small and cosy wooden houses and sea as a source of inspiration.

In 1989, 2 years before regaining independence in Estonia, Ilon Wikland brought Astrid Lindgren to see her childhood town. An idea started to develop slow and steady. In 2004 Ilon Wikland decided to give more than 800 works to Haapsalu – her childhood hometown. The gallery was opened in 2006.

An idea came forth to establish a centre, which would offer activity and playroom for children. Ilon’s Wonderland theme centre was opened in 2009 with a big house with gallery, cinema hall, a Bullerby-style kitchen, Karlsson’s cubby and playroom, a spacious play yard and handicraft cottages.

A need to refurbish and evolve the gallery led to cooperation with Tea Tammelaan, who curated and designed a new permanent exhibition with the title „I am always here. Ilon”.

The exhibition was opened in January 2014 and was awarded the Museum Rat Award for the best permanent exhibition in 2014 in Estonia.

Besides more than 200 Ilon Wikland’s original drawings it also exhibits her miniature plastic art pieces, photos, books, mementos and other materials about Ilon’s life, journeys and work. Everything is wheelchair-ac-

cessible and the pictures are also visible at child-height. The exhibition texts are in six languages. One can also see books drawn by Ilon and draw a picture on the wall in gallery being inspired by her work.

While the new exhibition aims to introduce Ilon Wikland’s work, biography and the birth of a book, theme centre aims to bring the visitor into the beautiful, safe and creative environment, where he or she has already been, reading Bullerby stories, Mardie, Karlsson, Brothers of Lionhearts and other wonderful books. Preserving and sharing Ilon Wikland’s heritage is very important for both Haapsalu and Estonia. This is something that is not found anywhere else in the world.

Ilon’s Wonderland is unique not only for playfulness and cosiness, but also by telling Ilon’s story in the environment where she has come from. Ilon’s complicated biography from a war refugee to a world-famous artist touches the soul of many people. Obviously, this is a recipe for a good exhibition/museum – an emotional story, successful implementation and soulful rendering. Museum pedagogues organize museum lessons for groups and guide children in handicraft activities. Families with children can take time off and enjoy playing together. Senior visitors can watch a documentary about Ilon and enjoy the exhibition full of memories. Ilon`s Wonderland takes one back to childhood regardless of age.

Establishing the new exposition was preceded by several years of preparation. Ilon Wikland placed her full trust in the decorator Tea Tammelaan. Two artists are sometimes able to instinctively understand each other and know how important it is for an artist to have his or her works properly exhibited.

That is why Tea Tammelaan also played the role of a curator for this exposition.

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≥ educational programme / photo monica schneider

Ilon Wikland is one of the most well-known Estonians in the world and certainly, she is the most famous Estonian related to Haapsalu, as she has illustrated most books of world famous children’s author Astrid Lindgren.

> gallery / photo monica schneider

The main benchmark of the new permanent exhibition is the fact that the museum introduces the life and creation of an alive and still actively creating artist. On one hand this is easier, curator can always ask, „What do you think Ilon, if we will do this or that...?” On the other hand, this is complicated to anticipate, what she may propose and what not....

At this point, it has been essential, how and to which extent Ilon Wikland allows to exhibit her life and creation.

The curator-designer’s greatest interest was to display the artist and her creative process, in addition to her rich creation. To show the visitor, how Ilon Wikland’s picture books are born, which is the artist’s workroom, which tools she uses, her personal belongings and tools, as well as preparatory sketches of a recently published book right from her desk have been exhibited. Specially for the exhibition, Ilon Wikland was photographed in her atelier and the photo is displayed life-size together with a copy of her worktable, as if the visitor could be Ilon’s guest in her atelier.

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Preparations for the exhibition were made in close contact with Ilon Wikland and her opinions on quite many items were decisive.

Altogether the cooperation was very smooth and Ilon showed extreme tolerance and trust in us.

Aim was to simultaneously exhibit as many works in the museum’s collection as possible and at the same time to create the possibility to exchange the works in the exposition so that in a couple of years all works in the museum’s collection could be exhibited at least once. Withdrawable showcases provide ample extra space for that.

Ilon’s Wonderland is a unique theme centre and museum devoted to a living artist, who attends the most important events, if possible. The artist’s story about getting into a foreign country and returning to the childhood’s land as a world-famous artist is rather special. Just as special is coming true of her big dream that her original drawings would be exposed to people is that she would be able to found Ilon Wikland’s Young Artist Prize,

Ilon Wikland’s work has been displayed in several different ways in the exposition: beautifully framed or carelessly marked, as original drawings used to be returned by publishing houses decades ago; as preparatory sketches or layouts, as miniature plastic art pieces and printed in various styles in the books, on postcards and on commodities, printed on various interior design details, such as curtains, ceramic wall tiles and cups.

The exposition provides interesting discoveries for children, adults and art professionals.

of children’s literature. The author of the graphic design was Katrin Kaev. The general designer Tea Tammelaan have been active in designing museums and exhibitions much more than twenty years. Great help was offered by Tiina Tammer as a publisher and a close friend of Ilon’s. There were the best advisors in technical and administrative fields.

All the work has been done in cooperation with the really dedicated team of Ilon’s Wonderland.

The most important thing is the artist’s own cooperation and presence, which is also acknowledged by the title of the exhibition „I am always here. Ilon”.

Working together with such a fantastic artist and personality could be inspiring for everyone. The best advice is to see and discover besides the creation that has become famous also the person behind the creation, the creator in the broadest sense of the word. This has been a unique experience, very instructive and pithy

The exhibition was prepared by a team of very dedicated and experienced professionals. Ilon Wikland herself is unquestionably a professional. The texts were written by Krista Kumberg, a well-known specialist

Authors: Liina Valdmann, Manager & Tea Tammelaan, Curator and Designer of the exhibition “I am always here. Ilon”.

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> play yard / photo liina valdmann

which would support and encourage young people with artistic talents.

9.

A New Life For Bergamo’s Teatro Sociale

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teatro sociale, bergamo, italy eu prize for cultural heritage / europa nostra award 2014

Nicola Berlucchi architectural and restoration designer, site manager ≥ studio berlucchi srl contrada soncin rotto 4 25122 brescia italy ≥ www.studioberlucchi.it nicolaberlucchi@studioberlucchi.it

The Teatro Sociale in the old town of Bergamo was built at the beginning of the 1804, but soon after the inauguration, the noble theater lived ups and downs, until all activity ceased in 1929. From that moment took turns a variety of uses of the building such as cinema or space for exhibitions and numerous projects were drawn up in order to swap to other functions calling for its complete abandon and destruction; the fact of being almost ruined was also its fortune because no project was realized for 80 years.

During the seventies and the eighties, several individual projects were designed in order to convert the spaces of the building to other functions like lecture halls, shopping mall, cinema etc. Only thanks to important contributions like the one of Prof. Cesare Brandi, that defined the idea of dismantling the Theatre like a “monstrous project that shouldn’t even be discussed at the beginning”, the building was preserved from the complete dismantling.

The architecture of the theatre was in a very advanced state of degradation: the rows of boxes, were unsafe for the neglect of time and inaccessible for any use; the area of the audience and the rooms of the theatre had undergone rearrangements and did not meet any current comfort and safety standard.

The overall covered surface of the building summed up to 4100 square meters, while the portion aim of the intervention exceeded the 3500 square meters.

The initial objective of the promoter, the Municipality of Bergamo, was to retrieve only the ground floor of the building. The remaining portion was considered unrecoverable, but the project was able to return the whole structure at its original function as a theatre, overtaking the initial objective.

The philosophy adopted for restoration was not inspired by the school of pure conservation, nor the in-style recovery, although philological; the designers have been inspired by a sort of "Critical and Conservative Restoration", an approach that includes measures not deliberately prevaricating or breaking compared to traditional materials found in the building, with an approach that does not want to stand out on the existing, but to restore decorum and unity only if possible, without the need to retain outright or to act with imitative integrations and additions.

The design team had to deal with complex and conflicting requirements as the preservation of the historic look of the building and of its decorations, respecting the present requests for accessibility, comfort and safety. The design process has involved the group leader, Eng. Arch. Nicola Berlucchi, as responsible for architectural and restoration aspect, The Studio SPC for the analysis of structural aspects and Intertecnica Group for the problems connected with systems and their integration with the historic building. Other consultants were asked to advice about safety (Arch. Silvano Pezzetti), fire protection (Eng. Luigi Biscardi) and stage and sceneries (Eng. Franco Malgrande).

The project has been forerun by a survey and a detailed analysis of the materials, the structures and the decorations, in order to calibrate in advance the interventions. The restoration began with the strengthening of the wooden rows of boxes thanks to a new steel counter-structure. Then, the area of the stage was modified in order to create three new levels of dressing rooms for the artists, a new elevator for the orchestra pit, a steel-and-wood structure for the stage and the new steel structure for strengthening the area of the stage and supporting the new flies. After the completion of heavy building and strengthening interventions, the THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 45

decoration restorers began to work on the plastered walls of the ground floor (entrance area), on the surfaces of the corridors, on the plastered wall of the boxes and on the survived decoration on the wood parapets of the “cavea”. Meanwhile, the electrical, plumbing and the air-conditioning systems were implemented and integrated in the preexisting structure, in order to reduce demolitions.

The refunctionalization has been completed with the mounting of new wooden doors and windows, of the lighting system, of all the furniture, of the seating and of the stage audio and video systems.

The restoration of decorated surfaces represented a delicate aspect of the work as well as it represents what visitors mostly see and judge. The history of superimposed pictorial layers was reconstructed to create a reliable frame of the phases of intervention on decorations, necessary reference for the general definition of the approach to restoration.

The aim of the restoration was to preserve and restore all original decorations, to com46 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

plete the gaps and the missing parts, to stop the decay without deleting the sign of time and to altering the old and damaged appeal.

The works wanted to avoid a new and “fake” look and erase a 200 years long history made even of degradation and carelessness.

The decorations of the wooden parapet, only partially preserved, were originally made by the famous painter Sanquirico with a monochrome chiaroscuro technique. For these surfaces we chose to respect and maintained a "ruined" appearance, lowering the tone of bigger lacks and of the portions with wooden integrations, even because of the absence of the original decorated ceiling. So, we deliberately chose not to apply a new covering layer for preserving the impression that characterized the theatre over the past 50 years, however, well aware that the appearance of the original nineteenth century theatre, as seen by nobles of 1800, was "without exposed wood" and made of precious and coloured marbles.

Even the original wooden ceilings of the boxes have been restored after the careful removal and consolidation of each panel. In accordance with the general attitude of the restoration, it was decided to veil the lacks and not to reconstruct the individual decorations, except for small gaps.

The viewer may consider conflicting each other and maybe bizarre some of the colour combinations, but this was the theatre in its moment of maximum splendour and this is what has survived: a theatre built by private shareholders, who loved to decorate their stages even differently one from each other, that wanted poor materials in flooring and archways but faux marble and sometimes merry and bright colours on the walls and in the main hall.

The final result was a theatre as if it had been well maintained over time, softening the effects of degradation and abandonment.

Where was a wreck now there is a fully air conditioned and lighted theatre with a highly asymmetric presence of decorations, de-

pending on the degree of weathering and anthropogenic degradation happened during the years of abandonment, but with a more readable and clear decorative frame. In the last year, the Teatro Sociale was opened for shows, conferences and cultural initiatives (both publicly and privately produced) for more than 80 days per year, hosting approximately a total of 25.000 spectators. The programs for the future are even more ambitious.

In conclusion, we believe and affirm that it is possible to adapt ancient monuments to modern requirements, but with a careful study that minimizes the impact and with solutions that comply with the building and its history. We are not allowed to erase centuries of constructive and decorative traditions developed by our predecessors in the name of new technologies and materials that often turn out to be obsolete or harmful after just a few years of usage.

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10.

Rereading The Past, Sharing The Present, Dreaming The Future

le Musées de la civilisation, Quebec, Canada 2014 governer general's history award for excellence in museums: history alive!

Hélène Bernier Director of exhibitions and international affairs ≥ Musées de la civilisation 16, rue de la barricade, cp 155 succ. b quebec g1k7a6 canada ≥ www.mcq.org/en renseignements@mcq.org ≥ facebook: mcqorg twitter: @mcqorg flickr: museedelacivilisation instagram: mcqorg youtube: mcqpromo 48 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

Naomi Fontaine, “The Great Story,” from This Is Our Story: First Nations and Inuit in the 21st Century.

The Musée de la civilisation, a Québec national institution, opened its doors in 1988 with the mandate of developing Québec’s ethnographic collections and showcasing, both nationally and internationally, the diversity of Québec's reality. Four additional exhibition and conservation spaces have since been entrusted to it, creating the museum complex called Musées de la civilisation, in the plural.

From its inception, the Musée has developed strong ties with Québec’s eleven Aboriginal Nations. The institution’s commitment to representing Aboriginal realities is clearly expressed in its Indigenous Peoples Policy (2012). It affirms the museum’s intention to be a privileged partner to Aboriginal peoples in the protection and promotion of their identities, helping to make their realities, heritage, and cultures known, and seeking their participation in museum activities and projects that concern them.

In preparing its first permanent exhibition, Encounter with the First Nations (1998-2013), the Musée sought the active participation of Aboriginal peoples. Indeed, the French title, Nous, les Premières Nations (literally "We, the First Nations"), suggested that the Nations were representing themselves to visitors, in a production of their own creation. In actuality, the collaboration was one of extensive consultation, with representatives of various communities responding to questions for-

mulated by the production team. While the representatives validated such aspects as content and display strategies, the museum retained leadership in the production. The process could be considered an initial stage in what is now called the new participatory museology.

In 2010, the institution set out to revamp the exhibition. Doing so was an opportunity for the Musée de la civilisation to explore a structurally inclusive approach to better represent experiences spanning thousands of years and many diverse traditions. Accordingly, the Exhibitions Department and its partner, La Boîte Rouge vif, a non-profit organization aimed at promoting the heritage of Aboriginal cultures, opted for an inclusive process of collaboration, making an unprecedented effort to enlist the participation of Aboriginal peoples in every phase of the project. The aim was to ensure that the exhibition would reflect the perspectives of people encountered in the communities.

On November 26, 2013, after a landmark exercise in “collaborative leadership” with the Aboriginal Nations of Québec, the Musée inaugurated This Is Our Story: First Nations and Inuit in the 21st Century. The title points to the socially engaged content, in which Aboriginal people present their reading of history, distinct from that generally contained in history books. It is also a statement addressed to Quebeckers of all origins, since the history of these eleven Nations is their history as well. Québec society holds within itself the memory of 500 years of contact with Aboriginal peoples—500 years of coexistence and exchange, but also of misunderstanding and conflict.

Some 90,000 Aboriginal and Inuit people live in Québec, comprising about 1% of its population. A fifth live in urban areas. In This Is Our Story, these women and men reread the past, THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 49

≥ Aboriginal infant carriers shown in This Is Our Story Credit : Musée de la civilisation, photographer : Jessy Bernier – Perspective Photo

“The story I want to tell you is no longer uniformly white. It takes place on the land, at sea, and within our hearts. And of course it has an ambition, one that’s simple and not idealistic.

It aims to let us look at who we are and accept where we come from.”

> The "wall of snowshoes" in This Is Our Story. Credit : Musées de la civilisation, photographer : Jessy Bernier – Perspective Photo

share the present, and, above all, dream the future. The exhibition draws on a rich collection as well as contemporary works, created to support its messages. It opens with Aboriginal People Today, immersing visitors in the current reality, ways of life, and unique heritage of the various communities. Next, We of Long Ago traces the long passage of Aboriginal peoples over the North American continent and across some 12,500 years of history, emphasizing their diverse traditions.

This is followed by A Time of Turmoil, which depicts the clash of civilizations: 400 years of colonization, transformation, and resilience.

Decolonization: New Alliances Emerge looks at initiatives, such as land claims, political and cultural negotiations, lobbying efforts, and transfers of administrative power, aimed at re-establishing historic relationships. Lastly, What Are Our Dreams for the Future? considers the concerns and aspirations of these communities.

The exhibition path itself is not revolutionary. Distinct, however, is the unique process 50 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

involved in its planning: First Nations and Inuit people were not only consulted, but active participants in developing the concept, content, and design of the exhibition, in an exhaustive process that lasted 38 months.

Representatives designated by each Nation met twice in a unique special assembly, the Mamo (“together,” in the language of the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok), to define expectations, methodologies, and themes.

Simultaneously, a multidisciplinary team visited 18 communities, often hundreds of kilometres apart, compiling an exceptional body of transcribed and video-recorded documentation. They took part in the everyday life of the communities and helped establish a climate of trust and confidence. Creative workshops were conducted in each Nation and at the Musée. The documentary memory of this process comprises more than 5,000 pages of testimony, 10,000 photographs, and 250 hours of video. A box containing copies of the compiled content was presented to each Nation during the inauguration.

creating a space in which stakeholders can express how they want to be represented and understand each other’s intentions.

In the medium term, the Musée de la civilisation will revamp another permanent exhibition, People of Québec... Then and Now. This raises a new question: should we continue to deal separately with these two historic paths, that of the European descendents and of the eleven Aboriginal Nations, which after all mirror each other? Could a single exhibition one day make the claim “This Is Our Story”?

This approach required that all eleven Nations and the museum leave their comfort zones and accept the expression of divergent views, making the exhibition a platform for reflection and debate. Communication was a major challenge throughout, navigating between French, English, and various Aboriginal languages. In this veritable Nation to Nation exchange, no single Nation was to dominate, even with the best of intentions, or impose its rhythm, presence, or ways of “inviting” itself. Still, the process involved eleven distinct Nations, each hoping to see its own historic trajectory reflected. A reality check soon demanded that the Aboriginal partners, museologists, and members of the scientific committee lower their expectations. Exhibitions inevitably have an allochtonous, or “outsider,” perspective that can distort through generalization, unable to satisfy the simultaneous demands of identity affirmation, cultural diversity, and relationships to history and contemporary reality.

Nonetheless, the “new participatory museology” remains positive and illuminating,

Thanks to the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok, Waban-Aki (Abenakis), Anishinabeg (Algonquins), Innu (Montagnais), Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawks), Hurons-Wendat, Wolastoqiyik (Malecite), Eeyou (Crees), Mi'gmaq, Naskapis and Inuit, and, in particular, to Élisabeth Kaine of La Boîte Rouge vif, Yves Sioui-Durand, exhibition scenographer, and Naomi Fontaine, contributing writer.

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≥ A workshop held to conceptualize the exhibition, in Atikamekw Nihirowisiwok territory Credit : La Boîte Rouge vif

Following this extraordinary museological experience, the Musée wishes to implement tools to foster an ongoing dialogue, in real time, between visitors and the communities, enabling the exhibition to remain dynamic and relevant.

How To Open A Museum With No Experience, No Investment And Nothing To Exhibit little museum of dublin, dublin, ireland david manely award emerging entrepeneur award 2014

Trevor White director

≥ little museum of dublin 15st stephen's green dublin 2 ireland ≥ 00353 1 661 1000 ≥ bureau@littlemuseum.ie www.littlemuseum.ie ≥ twitter: @dublinmuseum

11.

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Until 2011, Dublin was one of the only capitals in Europe without a museum of the city. That spring I decided to open the Little Museum of Dublin. This non-profit museum charts the social and cultural history of the city in the 20th Century. It was created at the height of a recession with practically no funding. As I had no experience in the museum world and nothing to exhibit, you might well wonder: what was I thinking?

I decided to open a museum because there wasn’t one. It seemed absurd that in a city of Dublin’s size there was nowhere to learn more about the history of the place. So I asked a friend, Simon O’Connor, to give me a hand. Fortunately he is a quick learner; indeed he is as capable as I am idealistic.

Calling ourselves the director (me) and the curator (Simon), we launched a public appeal for assistance.

Like most people, I love museums, but I am skeptical about some of the claims made on their behalf. A knowledge of the past will not help us to avoid the mistakes of our forebears. Being human, we keep repeating the same mistakes. Happily, however, museums record achievement as well as folly. There is consolation as well as regret in the act of remembering. In privileging the connections that we share with others, it seems to us that a people’s museum has an additional purpose, which is to encourage civic pride.

We want visitors to feel emotionally connected to the artefacts on display, so our guided tours are led by charming people who tell great stories, with the help of things like an old bingo card, the postcard that Samuel Beckett wrote to a young boy who lived in his childhood home, the bullets presented to a businessman by an IRA gunman who was (al-

A few weeks later, our city government, Dublin City Council, kindly gave us two rooms in one of the city’s finest Georgian townhouses.

The Little Museum was officially opened by our Lord Mayor in October 2011. Since then the museum has expanded into the rest of the building, and there are now over 5,000 artefacts in our collection, all donated by the people of Dublin.

To create a museum in less than six months, you need help from the public, corporate patrons, philanthropists and dozens of volunteers. In other words, you need to ask for assistance from a great many strangers. You have to believe in the value of what you’re doing, and you may even need to be a ‘foolish virgin.’ If we had known how hard it would be, there’s no way we would have tried to set up a museum. Being outsiders has enabled us, perhaps unwittingly, to create a distinctive experience for visitors.

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most) going to kill him, and the music stand that President John F. Kennedy used to address the Irish parliament. This emphasis on storytelling reflects the fact that Ireland has a rich oral tradition. It resonates with visitors too; last year we were the second most popular museum in Ireland on TripAdvisor.

in three months. Two weeks after the launch we had over 2,000 applications. Recently the Sydney Morning Herald described City of a Thousand Welcomes as the best free thing to do in Europe. Does it make any money? No. However, it feels like a privilege to operate the service.

As outsiders, we also acknowledge that many museums are forbidding places. Nobody wants a lecture anymore. That’s why we try to get our visitors talking. (Our motto is that boring museums are ancient history.)

For us, a good day is when an elderly Dubliner starts singing a song about the city to a group of visitors. Some of them scratch their heads; one or two walk out; but most join in, and to watch them participate in the telling of our story is profoundly rewarding.

Ireland has had a tough few years. History and warm hospitality are two of the things that make us who we are. In recording one and celebrating the other, we want to play a small part in the rebirth of this beleaguered state. I am proud of the work our team is doing. But this is just the beginning of a much longer story.

We also run a sister project called City of a Thousand Welcomes. This civic initiative enables proud Dubliners to welcome tourists over a free cup of tea or a drink. Our goal was to recruit 1,000 volunteer ambassadors with54 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

Having established a self-sustaining non-profit cultural institution on a tiny budget, our new goal is to make it the best small city museum in the world. Are we mad? Probably. But we feel responsible to the people who have helped us to put our collection together, and we want to ensure

that the history of this city is remembered by future generations.

achieve all this. But sometimes the idealists are the only realists.

There is scope to expand the museum on the site that we currently occupy. Indeed we hope that the Little Museum will soon become bigger, and we also want to create universal access, enabling everyone to visit this people’s museum. Put simply, we are trying to create the full-scale museum that our capital deserves, at a fraction of what it would otherwise cost the state to create such an institution.

Three years ago we launched a museum of the Irish capital. A few months ago we discovered that a committee of the great and the good had already tried and failed to open such a place. Now our ambition is to create a world-class cultural institution where citizens of the future can learn about the history of this extraordinary city. If the Irish end up walking slightly taller, that will be a bonus.

Perhaps it is folly to imagine that we can

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The Value Of 17th Century Mural Painting Rediscovered Through Restoration

12.

dragomirna church's 17th century frescoes sucueva, romania eu prize for cultural heritage / europa nostra 2014 GRAND PRIX AND PUBLIC CHOICE AWARD

Carmen Cecilia Solomonea conservation specialist ≥ Dragomirna village Mitocu Dragomirnei commune 727366, Suceava county Romania ≥ +52 554 969 13 +52 551 044 92 ≥ www.manastireadragomirna.ro csolomonea@yahoo.com 56 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

The “Restoration and Conservation of the Cultural Heritage and Modernisation of the Related Infrastructure at the Dragomirna Monastery, Suceava co., SMIS code 5565, Romania” project was selected within the Regional Operational Program 2007-2013, “Durable restoration and valorization of the cultural heritage, the creation and upgrading of related infrastructures” and co-funded by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund.

The project had 13 objectives, from which, objective no.3, the “The restoration of the Mural painting” was coordinated by the conservation specialist Carmen Cecilia Solomonea and has involved the participation of over 50 people, from experienced restorers to BA & MA students, over the programme period.

Each participant had accomplished operations in line with their degree of training and experience, as the complex interventions covered all technical problems. The work was carried out throughout 15 months (10.11.2010-15.02.2012).

The Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit is part of the Dragomirna Monastery compound.

It was built in 1609 and decorated by the Moldavian metropolitan bishop Anastasie Crimca and chancellor Luca Stroici. This is a unique monument, through its svelte silhouette and the influences of the 17th century European art. This church ends the series of 16th century Moldavian churches and opens another era in the religious architecture by exceeding the pattern of the Moldavian medieval style, differentiating itself through the architectural dimensions and shapes.

The church of Dragomirna Monastery is the original ecclesiastic edifice of the old Romanian art and has its uniqueness based on the relation between the plan and the elevation,

which highlights the verticality (~40m), and particularly the high tower that is fully ornamented on the outside with carved stone elements. The church preserves mural paintings in the affresco technique as well as areas finalized in the mezzofresco technique, with regions richly gilded by the application of gold foil, including on top of the carved elements, dated to the beginning of the 17th century in the naos, tower and chancel. These painted and gilded profiled stone elements are not present in any other church in the northern part of Moldavia. All carved and profiled elements in the ornamentation of the naos and chancel are covered with a thin limewash preparatory layer, on top of which vegetal, floral motifs and also birds are painted, in strong hues of red, blue, green, black and gold, which complete the complex iconographic program of the mural painting (900 sq m achieved before 1629). For the areas painted in blue, painters used the very qualitative enamel blue pigment which consequently shows a very good state of conservation, with an intensive hue, and on certain areas it is mixed to a small amount of azurite.

The state of decay of the affresco painting, the presence of 19th century repairing and overpainting required the undertaking of urgent restoration interventions. A series of decays took place throughout time, when defects at the tower windows and the church roof favoured the infiltration of humidity in the masonry and the mural painting. The paint layer was very sensitive, especially earth colours and cinnabar red pigment. A technical particularity was the copper green pigment which was applied in a thick layer by the painters, in the a secco technique, and which showed a serious powdering condition. The considerable thickness of the paint layer in the Church of Dragomirna was one of the major restoration problems in terms of cleaning and consolidation of pigments.

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tific restoration process, with specific operations, which facilitated the possibility of the integral aesthetic recuperation of the painting. The restoration interventions took place in 4 phases: 1. preliminary research – tests on the painting and the areas with elements of carved stone, taking samples for the physicochemical analysis of pigments and the preparatory layer, locale cleaning and differentiated adherence tests with compatible efficient products for the composition of the pigments used for the mural painting of the southern and western walls of the naos; 2. mural painting treatments (cleaning, consolidation): removal of the overpainting and previous repairing from the upper areas, aesthetic presentation of the lacunae, permanent monitoring of the interior climate of the church; During the 18th – 20th centuries, various interventions were carried out at the base of the walls, consisting in overpainting in weak tempera and oil technique, covering the original painting on the registers at the base of the church walls.

Before the restoration works, the quality, chromatic and compositional amplitude of the mural painting could not be noticed as the paint layer was also affected by repairing works with plaster, cement and limewash which caused abrasions, lacunae, scratches.

The human factor also affected in time the lowermost parts of the walls leaving incised traces in the painting: names, signs, texts, data, some of which have historical-documentary value.

Through this project, the painting was for the first time restored. The entire mural painting compound was subjected to a scien58 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

3. interventions and treatments on the tower painting, arches and the upper part of the chancel: cleaning of the paint layer, of the preparatory layer and of the support on the stone surfaces which lost fragments of colour, stabilization of detached areas and consolidation of the paint layer; 4. interventions and treatments on the painting of the chancel and the lower parts of the naos, the aesthetic presentation of the lacunae; interventions for the restoration of the areas with 19th century a secco tempera painting decorating the bases of the pillars of the western wall.

The complex mural painting conservation pointed out the spectacular original aspect of the painting restored for the first time after 400 years since its creation.

“The result of the interventions is spectacular, and the church can be admired by visitors

in its original form designed at the beginning of the 17th century, time when it was an absolute architectural novelty having a sumptuous painting neither seen in preceding nor in succeeding monuments” said Carmen Solomonea, Lead Specialist of Dragomirna Church restoration project.

During the Vienna ceremony, on 5th of May, the project was announced as the winner of the Europa Nostra Awards Public Choice Award 2014. More than 10,000 persons double the amount of the previous year, voted for their preferred projects from amongst the 27 laureates. They voted for their three favourites, of which only one could be from their home country.

project celebrates the heritage of southeastern Europe through sacred architecture, and creates a genuine relationship between European and world heritage.”

The restoration of this monument was not an easy task. The Jury of the Awards praised this project's high-level of professionalism and very sophisticated conservation. The restorers used traditional, natural materials and have done an outstanding job... This remarkable artistic work consists of 900 square meters of frescoes that were returned to their original splendour.” said Denis de Kergorlay, Executive President of Europa Nostra.

Describing the Dragomirna project, voters have written: “This is a place steeped in history and spirituality, which deserves to be preserved for future generations" and "This THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 59

13.

The World Of Art Can Be Reached By Many Roads National Gallery of Denmark copenhagen, denmark European Museum Academy & Hands On! 2014 children in museums award

Marianne Grymer Bargeman Head, Children & Youth Department

Nana Bernhardt Head, School programmes 60 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

≥ National Gallery of Denmark Sølvgade 48-50 DK—1307 København K. Denmark ≥ smk@smk.dk www.smk.dk ≥ facebook: smk Twitter: @StatensMuseum pinterest: statensmuseum youtube: StatensMuseumfKunst

Example no. 2: In connection with the SMK’s current exhibition for children, What Makes a Home?, the SMK created a special activity for the winter holidays: a play area where children can use 500 cardboard boxes to build houses. After having played with the boxes, a father and his son approach the Information desk, quite breathless, and ask: “What else is there for us to try?”.

The two examples illustrate different approaches to visiting and using art museums with children. For Peter Bastian, the state of being bored is a positive one: with art and art museums you never know what you get.

Sometimes we are surprised and see something we have never seen before. At other times we get bored. According to Bastian, this is of great value and benefit to us in itself; the aspect of unpredictability lifts us out of the humdrum habits of everyday life and prompts us to wonder at the world. The father in the second example arrives at the museum expecting to be activated – physically, too – and his question is reminiscent of the logic usually applied at amusement parks. Perhaps the winter holiday workshops imprinted him with these expectations: “this was fun and easy to do – so what’s next??”

Many doors can open up onto the world of art, ranging from boredom to physical activity, from thoughts and words to hands busily working. This article is about some of the many pathways that can lead you to the world of art, and about some of the challenges you may encounter along the way.

The Children In Museums Award The Children in Museums Award was set up in 2012 by European Museum Academy (EMA) and the international children’s museum organisation Hands On! International. The award is presented annually, and in 2014 it went to the SMK in recognition of the SMK’s overall work for children and teens over the course of many years.

The jury’s reasons for choosing the SMK as the winner included the following statements: “The jury was unanimous in praising the in-depth and high quality presentation, materials and programmes for children, which they considered unique for an art museum. Children are taken seriously by curators and director, and ideas from the children’s presentation are adapted in the main museum. Complex subjects, well researched, are made accessible to children and offer a unique, surprising and stimulating environment based on the idea of freedom of thought and an original approach. (…)

The combination of workshop spaces, exhibition area and drawing room is a unique idea.”

Visions And objectives For the SMK, receiving this award represented the culmination of many years of strategic work with and for children and teens; work that has taken the form of special programmes designed specifically for pre-schoolers, schools, young adults, and families. Our overall vision for our work with children and young people is to improve their opportunities in life by means of art and creativity. In our work we focus on mutual learning processes, and all projects are, to the greatest extent possible, based on user involvement. In our day-to-day activities we work to ensure:

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≥ pillow fight at the opening of what makes a home? / smk foto

Example no. 1: The Danish musician Peter Bastian is visiting an art museum with his grandchild. After a while the child exclaims: “I’m bored”. Peter Bastian replies: “Do you know what, pet? That’s the beauty of art museums”.

• that art and creativity can play an active part in the everyday lives of all children and young people

> children investiganting a work by bank&rau on the fringe of civilisation 2014 / smk foto

• that knowledge and lessons learned are shared and made accessible • that The Children and Youth Department acts as a microcosm for learning within our organisation

Zones Within The Museum’s Collections The SMK collections are home to art that spans seven centuries, from the early Renaissance to the latest cutting-edge works.

The collections constitute the heart of the museum, and when the collection displays were rearranged in 2011 the museum decided to create two special zones that are particularly family-friendly. The results were the Match-SMK set-up and the drawing studio, both of which offer new avenues of approach to the world of art.

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The Match SMK set-up consists of a long piece of wooden furniture placed inside one of the largest exhibition rooms. Built into this piece of furniture visitors can find board games developed especially for families with children aged six to ten. The objective of the game is to invent good stories based on the art in the room. The drawing studio is distinctively different from the other rooms in the museum with its interactive shelves and its flea-market chairs. It also offers the opportunity to hand in a drawing, thereby taking part in the monthly drawing competition.

Exhibitions For Children The museum collections also form the starting point for the special exhibitions for children, which the museum has staged from 1994 onwards. These exhibitions often involve a specific theme, addressing big questions such as life and death or what freedom is. The target group is children aged six to twelve, and the displays are suitable for school excursions as well as for families vis-

iting on their own. All of these exhibitions are always developed in close co-operation with children. The objectives of the museum’s exhibitions for children are: 1. To create relevant, engaging exhibitions that present first-rate art on the children’s own terms by means of close co-operation with children and museum/education professionals.

2. To create spaces for contemplation in which a few, selected works (presented with young audiences in mind) take up a lot of space – mentally as well as physically.

4. To experiment with various aspects of learning & education, presentation, space and design, thereby allowing these exhibitions to act as a microcosm and sandbox for learning that can be fruitfully applied to other activities within the organisation.

5. To document and evaluate the exhibitions in co-operation with external researchers and academics.

Our current exhibition What Makes a Home? was opened with a massive pillow fight staged in front of the museum; an event that Denmark’s largest newspaper Politiken described as the most hilarious opening ever in the whole history of the SMK.

Children And Young People In 2015 The children and young people of today are open-minded, extrovert, social, communicative, active and restless. They enjoy great freedom, but this also includes the freedom of freefalling. Everywhere we find that high

demands are placed on each individual’s ability to navigate, to assert one’s own direction and yardsticks, to find meaning where no standards and norms exist. Today, more than ever, being young requires robustness, resilience, endurance, self-control, a keen conscience, curiosity and independence. We believe that encountering art can enhance young people’s ability to face new challenges and stimulate their willingness to experiment and reflect on things as part of a wider community.

Some of the challenges we are facing are: how can we create spaces that suit children and adults, young and old? Spaces that invite contemplation and movement, active participation and boredom? John Cage says: “If something is boring for two minutes, try it for four.” That is one road you could take; there are many others, too.

Read more about our practice in the book Dialogue-based Teaching. The Art Museum as a Learning Space and on our website http:// www.smk.dk/besoeg-museet/undervisning/ bag-om-bu/ THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 63

> collaborative drawing matisseexhibition / smk foto

3. To stimulate children’s imagination, creativity and sense of wonder by means of dialogue, multivoicedness and diversity.

Exhibition Design - The Interface For The Future

Miraikan (The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation): "Songs of Anagura", Tokyo, Japan Asia Pacific Network of Science & Technology Centres Creative Award 2014

Maholo Uchida manager, exhibition development division ≥ 135-0064 2-3-6 Aomi Koto-ku Tokyo 135-0064 japan

≥ +81-3-3570-9188 ≥ www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/en/ ≥ ≥ facebook: miraikan.jp twitter: @miraikan

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Miraikan (The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation) is a new type of museum that was established in Tokyo 2001.

Our nickname, “ Miraikan” originates from 2 Japanese words: Mirai” meaning future, and “Kan” meaning museum. So Miraikan literally means “Museum for the future”. Our mission is to help people understand the things happening in our world today from a scientific point of view, and engage in dialogues with real scientists while considering the future that awaits us. We believe that science and technology are part of culture, and we provide an open forum for all to ponder and discuss the future roles of science and technology.

Since the beginning, Miraikan has been developing and evolving new science exhibition theories, which includes activity, experience, engagement, and science visualization. There are two unique aspects about Miraikan’s exhibitions. First, we do not have “collections of artifacts” because our exhibitions are linked to the most up-to-date, cutting-edge science that leads us into the future. We continually develop exhibitions every year because cutting edge science changes and advances so very quickly. Second, the science and technology topics are based upon on-going research that has no artifacts; therefore we face no such limitations in exhibit design.

Thus, we need to challenge ourselves to explore new exhibition styles unencumbered by objects, artifacts or museum activities.

The internal exhibition development team comprises half from a science background and half from a creative background and together work to visualize science. We plan and design all exhibitions and activities together with outer creative talents like architects, product designers, movie makers, musicians, game designers, and illustrators to name a few, building a customized team according to the target and mission of each ex-

hibit. The exhibition is not an artifact to share and admire, it should be an attractive, interactive interface to imagine the future, and to share scientific thinking and the knowledge of cutting edge science.

An example of such an exhibition would be “Song of Anagura”, one of the most attractive exhibitions in Miraikan that help visitors experience “spatial information science” that premiered in 2011. The exhibition design is based on game theory with sensors, a tracking system, and songs created with a singing voice synthesizer. Our team was composed of our in-house group and a game producer and designer to discover how we could invite the visitors/players into a “made world”.

Spatial information science is the science of measuring the behavior of people and objects in a real living space, calculating and understanding the results, and thereby supporting and improving people's spatial lives. In other words, it involves creating a digital copy of the world, anticipating what will happen next in this world, and preparing, in advance, the information that people desire, thereby avoiding problems that typically occur. The more information provided by people (visitors), the more substantial the results. You gain a sense that when spatial information science permeates society, the world will know, protect, embrace, and support you.

Games have sustaining rules, and theories with many exhibitions following the game designing approach. The goal is for the visitor to share and experience an imagined future.

The rule is the process of exhibition. The player is the visitor. The visitor follows instructions and visits a totally imaginary world set 1,000 years in the future: the “Anagura=cave”. Anagura is an advanced research laboratory sharing people's information and turning the information connections into a powerful force for humankind.

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Each visitor has an avatar that follows, guides, collects and deposits the visitor’s information into Anagura. This process enriches the visitor’s sense of power cumulating into the happiness event= a song derived from the visitor’s information that then is played in the space.

The exhibition won the “Japan Media Art Festival” in entertainment award, which is maybe the first time a science exhibition was so recognized as an entertainment piece.

The exhibition looks a physical, interactive game, as the visitor enjoys staying in, walking around, and communicating with other visitors thanks to each visitor’s avatar. Anagura’s world is pop, beautiful, sensual and full of happy music.

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There is another award winning exhibition “Tsunagari”, the 2014 “Good design award, best 100”. “Tsunagari” consists of our symbol exhibit, the Geo-Cosmos and two tools, the Geo-Scope and the Geo-Palette. The Geo-Cosmos is the symbol exhibit of Miraikan that produces a rendition of our Earth shining brightly in space with a super high resolution exceeding 10 million pixels. It is the world's first "Globe-like display" using organic LED panels. It is one example of an exhibition that works as an exhibit, also a science visualization device, and works as an educational and research system.

Through collaboration between researchers and artists within and outside Japan, this project involves collecting scientific information about the Earth, and presenting and

communicating the information in a visual manner that appeals to the senses. The mission of this project is to deepen our knowledge about Earth and ourselves, consider what each person can do in order to relate today’s Earth to future generations, and create a vision for the future with people around the world. These three tools connect the exhibition system to the world, and create a new perspective of the Earth based on the concept of “TSUNAGARI” (links/relations/ connections). We aspire to work other science museums and research institutes, and become a base for receiving and disseminating data to make Earth sustainable.

To attract people of all ages and interests, the initial visual is beautiful, and with closer attention a sense of communication discov-

ered. Miraikan endeavors to create exhibitions that challenge the intellect, is beautifully attractive, and intelligently entertaining.

Like most museums, increasing visitor’s engagement is vital. Yet, our mission is goes beyond simply providing knowledge, our mission is to involve the visitor in concieveing and creating a future together with us. This mission is all-inclusive by involving our visitors, citizens, researchers, artists, and institutes. We have many exhibitions and systems that serve several experiences in science, development, and/or artistic expressions.

Miraikan is open to every person eager to make a better future, who wants to invite others to their project, who understands the power of collective creativity.

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15.

Inclusion Leads To More Inclusion Museum of Gothenburg, gothenburg, sweden Swedish Museum of the Year 2014 Award

Karl Arvidsson Head, Learning, Programmes and Visitor Services 68 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

≥ Museum of Gothenburg Norra Hamngatan 12 411 14 Gothenburg Sweden ≥ karl.arvidsson@kultur.goteborg.se www.goteborgsstadsmuseum.se ≥ facebook: gotheborgs-stadsmuseum instagram: stadsmuseetgbg twitter: @stadsmuseetgbg pinterest: stadsmuseetgbg/

The Museum of Gothenburg´s mission is to create connections between Gothenburg's history, present and future. The collections, in dialogue with the outside world, form the basis of our work.

Museum Of The Year In 2014 The Association of Swedish Museums along with Swedish ICOM are responsible for the administration of the Museum of the Year award. The purpose of the award is to recognize excellent museum practices and to inspire other museums to innovative and pioneering activities of good quality.

We actually made a grand slam that day, also winning The Exhibition of the Year and being the host of the Educational Project of the Year!

The Exhibition of the Year was as mentioned above called Rom San – We are Roma, and was one of the main reasons the jury selected our museum.

A Proud Director Of The Museum Of Gothenburg

In April 2014 a very nervous delegation from Gothenburg were at the Spring Meeting for Swedish museums in the city of Umea. We were nominees to the title Museum of the Year and we knew who we were competing against, two exceptional museums from the cities of Malmö and Umea. In the main auditorium at the Peoples House the announcer finally told the assembly that The Museum of Gothenburg was named Museum of the Year and we were of course delighted (massively happy, that is).

In an interview after the award ceremony the director of the museum, Cornelia Lönnroth said: "It feels great! We are so excited and honored for the Museum of the Year Award and that Rom san - We are Roma became the Exhibition of the Year. It feels like we have managed to transform an old cultural institution into a museum, which is active in the present. The audience come in greater numbers to us and thinks that we are relevant and do important work. We got these prices and it makes me very proud and will give new energy to the whole museum. With our new experiences, we are now proceeding with a wider participation. Our goal is to create a museum that matters for all people in Gothenburg and the rest of the world!"

The Jury Motivation

About Rom San – We Are Roma

“A classical City Museum that has made a broad impact through courage to dare in an innovative work that has touched and changed many people's lives and the broader debate in society. By highlighting the social dimension, norm perspective and everyone's history, Rome san, a project of an ethnic group in today's multicultural Sweden radically changed the museum's way of working and demonstrates that the added value and the force a museum can give and be in the local community, for individuals and respect for the equal dignity and rights.”

This is an English summary from the evaluation made by the project manager and elistra consulting. Rom san was a two-year ESF-funded project (Priority Area 1, Improving Human Capital) at The Museum of Gothenburg initiated by the Romani association Romer för kulturell utveckling in cooperation with two journalists and a photographer.

Project owner for Rom san was The Museum of Gothenburg. The overarching goal of the project has been to combat anti-Gypsy attitudes in society by awareness-raising and

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≥ photo dan isaac wallin

About The Museum

knowledge-sharing activities directed to both Roma and non-Roma.

> photo CARL HEATH

The on-going evaluation has taken place in continuous dialogue with the project workers. A report presents results and effects on the basis of the project objectives. The report discusses lessons learned, challenges and success factors in a wider Romani inclusion perspective.

The project has been of benefit to – and has benefitted from – the on-going work on Romani inclusion in the city of Gothenburg which has involved partnerships and collaborations with a range of actors on a regional level.

Rom san has also given rise to several multiplicator effects.

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The evaluation shows that Rom san has contributed to increased knowledge and understanding of the historic and contemporary situation of the Roma people. 1 706 people from various occupational backgrounds in West Sweden have been offered a special half-day course designed for the target groups including lectures, displaying of the exhibition ”We are Roma” and dialogues with Roma pedagogues. The exhibition was visited by 130 000 people and stimulated public debate on Roma issues. Romani role models have been exposed through portraits, personal narratives and films reflecting the diversity within Romani communities. The work has also led to an increased awareness among Roma of their rights. By preserving history from a Roma perspective the project has promoted the cultural rights of the

Romani people. The Museum of Gothenburg has discovered new ways of working. An important tool for ensuring the redistribution of power and influence has been the right of veto for the Roma project workers.

tions. We do not want to find separate, individual solutions. We want to find solutions.

We want more people to experience and enjoy the museum’s exhibitions under the same conditions.

“The Museum Of Gothenburg Has Discovered New Ways Of Working”

Try again...

Almost two years ago we talked about what would come after Rom san. We wanted to continue in the same spirit. The museum had been contacted by various interest groups for functional variations over the years. That had led to some minor collaborations. What if we went all in this time – Culture for all, for real?

We contacted and got project partners and an in-house project manager. We applied and received funding from the Swedish Inheritance Fund and the project Funktek was born.

Inclusion Leads To More Inclusion might have been a rather bold title of the article. Maybe Trying To Work With Inclusion Leads To More Tries To Work With Inclusion is more appropriate. Can you ever work with complete and total inclusion? Well, if we don´t try we´ll never know, will we?

About Funktek This is how we think: Culture should belong to everyone. Therefor it should be available to everyone.

≥¸photo MARTIN BJÖRNESSON

The purpose of the Funktek project is to ensure that everyone can visit and experience museums. Everyone has the right to be a part of, and to help create culture. But for people with a function variation, many museums are difficult to visit. The Museum of Gothenburg is one of them. We want to change this.

This is why we want people with function variation, to examine and analyse the exhibitions and programmes of the museum from the point of view of their function variation.

To be our Funktek test pilots. We need their knowledge and experience, to help us create a better and more accessible museum.

During the three years of the project we will be testing new technological ideas and soluTHE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 71

16.

In Pursuit Of A “Moving” Exhibition Display

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Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, nagoya, japan japan design space association gold award 2014

Toru Hirono automobile pavilion group manager ≥ Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology 1-35, Noritake Shinmachi 4-chome Nishi-ku, Nagoya 451-0051 Japan ≥ 052-551-6115 ≥ t.hirono@tcmit.org www.tcmit.org/english/

Renewal of the “Early Years” Zone of the Automobile Pavilion The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology was established as a corporate museum in the birthplace of the Toyota Group. Now 21 years old, the museum was opened on June 11, 1994 on the centennial of the birth of Toyota Motor Corporation’s founder, Kiichiro Toyoda.

The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology is located on the original site of a pilot factory for development of automatic looms that was built by Sakichi Toyoda, founder of the Toyota Group and father of Kiichiro Toyoda. The factory was opened about 100 years ago in 1911. Toyoda built his factory to develop, improve and test cloth weaving machines. Later, he also built a thread spinning factory on the site that became the head office and factory for a company he founded called Toyoda Boshoku Corporation. In fact, the Inaugural General Shareholders Meetings of Toyota Industries Corporation and Toyota Motor Corporation were also held there. This site is certainly the birthplace of the Toyota Group of companies.

Seventeen companies of the Toyota Group are involved in running the museum, which was established for two purposes. The first was to tell the world, and in particular the youth of today, the importance of the “spirit of being studious and creative,” and the importance of monozukuri, or "making things."

The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology uses the evolution of textile machine and automobile technologies to show the importance of this.

The other purpose of the museum was to preserve our industrial heritage of which many valuable examples, from an architectural perspective as well, remain onsite.

Within the red brick walls and timber factory

buildings, there are spaces that still have a number of pillars and that represent a valuable industrial heritage that must be left for future posterity. These buildings have historical value that the museum is preserving and reusing, while at the same time utilizing them as exhibition facilities.

This leads us to the characteristics of our exhibits. One of the main characteristics is the use of dynamic exhibits that allow visitors to see real textile and automobile-related machines in operation right in front of their eyes. The staff actually operate and talk about the machines so visitors can familiarize themselves with and understand the principles behind the designs, and the technologies behind the machines.

The museum’s exhibition spaces consist mainly of the Textile Machinery Pavilion and the Automobile Pavilion. Inside the entrance of the Automobile Pavilion, there is an area where visitors can see what Toyota automobiles looked like in the beginning, showing the evolution from textile industry to automobile industry. This area was refurbished for the 20th anniversary of the museum to make it easier to understand.

According to some visitors, the problem at the time was that because the exhibit consisted mainly of picture panels and explanations, they lost interest in reading before they got to the end. In other words, we were unable to tell our story because they would not read it all. Museums have to be able to convey the background and meaning of an exhibit before they can communicate its value. That is why we had to change our exhibits from those where visitors “had to read to understand” to ones where they “wanted to read to be moved.”

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We partnered with Nomura Co., Ltd. in this project because we had been dealing with them since the museum was opened, so we commissioned the design and construction from them. Through our discussions, we decided to create a compelling exhibit where a diverse range of visitors, from children to adults and even international visitors, could experience the space through enjoyment of film and stories that inspire an intuitive interest and understanding. Rather than a static exhibit of things and descriptions like conventional museums use, we decided to reuse parts of the original factory to build life-sized dioramas that recreated typical scenes of the time. We constructed bold scenes using real documents and photos to create a unique exhibition space that uses cartoons to provide the descriptions. In addition to simplifying the descriptions, we made effective use of some of our founder’s memorable quotes 74 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

that represent a dialogue of sorts that visitors could enjoy reading like a storybook.

Another important element of the exhibit is the staff who explain each part directly to the visitors. The area is divided into five small rooms, with each space offering a slightly different experience and staff who explain the spaces in real life.

Thanks to this design, exhibits in the “Early Years” zone of the Automotive Pavilion received the Spatial Design Award 2014 (Gold Award) from the Japan Design Space Association, which is one of the largest spatial and environmental design awards globally.

Its predecessor, the Display Design Award, started in 1966 and for 49 years was presented to excellent designs aimed at creating spatial communication.

The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology has also received other awards listed below, and with such recognition in Japan and around Asia, Toyota is extremely proud of this institution.

and Technology, we will endeavor to use this experience to further improve our exhibits so that visitors will enjoy listening to the messages we want to convey.

• Display Industry Award 2014 (Nippon Display Federation) Silver Award • Sign Design Award 2014 (Japan Sign Design Association) Diamond Award • Asia Pacific Interior Design Award 2014 (Hong Kong Interior Design Association) Award of excellence • Design For Asia Award 2014 (Hong Kong Design Center) Merit Award Looking ahead to the 25th anniversary of the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 75

17.

The Best Hidden Museum In Riga

Žanis Lipke Memorial, Riga, Latvia European Museum Forum / Kenneth Hudson Award 2014

Lolita Tomsone DIRECTOR ≥ Žanis lipke memorial mazais balasta dambis 8 riga, lv -1048 latvia ≥ www.lipke.lv info@lipke.lv ≥ facebook: zanalipkesmemorials twitter: @lipkememorial

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The Lipke family used to live and still lives on Kipsala, at 8 Mazais Balasta Dambis. Mazais Balasta Dambis is a tiny cul-de-sac that resembles a small, buttoned pocket sewn into the lining of a jacket. It can’t be seen from either the river or the main artery of the peninsula, Kipsalas Street; it is often left out of city maps. When the ridgepole celebration was held at the Lipke memorial building, many of the invited guests, dressed in their party clothes, walked the pockmarked pavement of Balasta Dambis back and forth, knocking on neighbours’ doors in search of this unknown place. The Lipke Memorial, which is actually not so small, may become Riga’s best hidden museum. This concealment is not only factual but also symbolic for this place used to serve as a hideaway.

In the yard that is the endpoint of the tiny street, an underground bunker had been dug out. That is where Žanis Lipke had made a hiding place for people saved from the Jewish ghetto. One exit from the bunker was under a doghouse, the other on the northern hillside. During the Second World War, eight to twelve people used this 3x3 meter hole in the ground as a shelter, often for long periods of time. The visitor should note that it was impossible to build the memorial above the actual bunker, for then it would be located right in the yard of the Lipke family. Above the hole, that has since been filled in but after the war served Žanis as a pit for fixing his car, the family now keeps their firewood. It is important to stress that the German police never found this shelter, Lipke was never caught and none of the people involved were ever betrayed. If that had been the case, there would be no Lipke family here today.

The Lipke Memorial has been built next to Lipke’s house in an empty space overlooking the Daugava. The ascetic, windowless building of dark grey wood resembles an overturned boat resting ashore – like a fer-

ryman’s boat that has completed its mission.

It could also be seen as Noah’s Ark that has descended back on dry land after the flood with the lucky survivors, the new humanity that God has decided not to annihilate. Finally, the building also resembles a black shed, a building that used to be common on Kipsala, once inhabited by fishermen: tarred, made of barge boards with their inimitable scent, leaning to one side from the wind.

From the interior, where light is trying to find its way in through rough boards, the structure seems to tell us about the Kipsala we have never experienced and never will: with a steamer landing, scattered farmsteads and curing sheds separated by open sandy spaces.

Architect Zaiga Gaile has designed the memorial so that the passage through the enclosed tunnel that begins by the large entrance gate bears no suggestion of the real scale and structure of the building, and it takes a while for the visitor to locate its centre. It is astonishing, as one realizes that the monolith building actually has three levels joined together by an open shaft in the centre, allowing a glimpse of the basement from the attic. The basement level contains a concreted bunker in the original dimensions with nine bunks dropping down from the wall. The visitor cannot climb down and enter the bunker, only look down into it from above, from the attic. Yet, it may very well be impossible to give a modern person an idea of what it was like to live in such extreme circumstances for prolonged periods of time: a dark, cramped, cold, airless space without water or a toilet. By making this bunker inaccessible to the visitors, who can only look at it from afar, the architect emphasizes that the memorial is not aimed at making one identify with the people who once found shelter there or to foster one’s sense of history by simple, almost childish means. The notions of hiding, hope, rescue and courage of which this THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 77

place speaks should be able to transcend the memory of the particular historical event and acquire a wider and deeper significance.

On the first level, right above the bunker, there is the sukkah – a fragile, scaffold-like wooden construction without a roof and with transparent inner walls made of paper. From the outside it is covered with black boards to resemble Lipke’s woodshed. In Judaism, sukkah is a temporary shelter or shed whose religious significance is celebrated during Sukkot or the Feast of Booths. To Jews sukkah serves as a reminder of the tents and other fragile shelters of the ancient Israelites where they lived for forty years after God, with the help of Moses, had freed them from slavery in Egypt but had yet to bring them to the Promised Land.

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Viktors Jansons, the author of the artistic concept behind the memorial, has conceived of the sukkah as a symbolic double of the bunker: a temporary shelter that seems to be suspended between the heaven and the earth. On the thin walls of the sukkah artist Kristaps Gelzis has drawn – with light strokes discernible only in good light -- a landscape with a verdant valley at the height of the summer. This landscape, which Gelzis calls “a meditation”, can be seen both as a meditation on the Promised Land and a vision of the Latvian summer countryside before the war. It is nature in its primeval simplicity and beauty, an archetypical testimony to life, the source of life and constant rebirth.

The drawing is dim and less than concrete for it is an image held in one’s memory or an image conjured in one’s imagination by hope and longing for freedom.

On the attic level, there are a number of showcases that tell the story of the Lipke family, people who helped Lipke with his rescue efforts and the complex personality of Žanis Lipke himself. A number of versions exist regarding his calling as a saviour: a personal disdain of the German occupiers; adventurism; exceptional “goodness” of character. The memorial aims to be not only a place where one stops, looks back and remembers, but also a place where one continues to try to find out who Žanis Lipke was. all images ansis starks

Above the sukkah on the attic level, there is an open hatch in the floor through which the lower two levels can be observed. The authors of the memorial consider it essential for the visitor to look at the real shelter, the bunker, and the symbolic shelter, the sukkah, from above. First of all, it implies looking back at the past from a point in the future where one no longer can discern details but has gained a perspective on the bigger picture: interconnections, immutable values, the intransient. On the one hand, the importance of individual choices is brought home to one. On the other hand, one looks from the vantage point of a narrator or, figuratively speaking, God, for we know that the people who found shelter in the bunker survived the war whereas at the time, they could only hope for such an outcome.

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The Lines Of Torres Vedras: A Remarkable Restoration

Historical Route of the Lines of Torres Vedras, Lisbon, Portugal EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award 2014

Ana Umbelino Town Councillor and Vice-President, Association for the Historical and Touristic Development ≥ Association for the Historical and Touristic Development of the Lines of Torres Vedras Praça Dr. Eugénio Dias, 12 2590-016 Sobral de Monte Agraço Portugal ≥ www.cilt.pt anaumbelino@cm-tvedras.pt ≥ facebook: Rota-Histórica-Linhas-de-Torres

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The Lines of Torres Vedras are the most remarkable set of fortifications from the Napoleonic Wars, where major military maneuvers with the confrontation of troops took place in Sobral, Arruda dos Vinhos and Vila Franca de Xira.

They constitute an historical reference for the strategy and military architecture in Europe. For its uniqueness, it has become an important symbol of identity and a powerful educational resource.

The Memorandum of Wellington (20 October 1809) directed to Lieutenant Fletcher gave orders to survey the terrain and fortify the most advantageous and defensible positions, thus creating a defensive system to the north of Lisbon, which would come to be known as the Lines of Torres Vedras. The system comprised three lines, with a total of 152 redoubts, 600 pieces of artillery, an optical telegraphic communication system based on signal posts, defended by approximately 140.000 Portuguese, British and Spanish soldiers. It extended for more than 88 kilometers between the Tagus River and the Atlantic Ocean to protect Lisbon from the French Army.

The Lines of Torres Vedras established a turning point in the history of the Napoleonic campaigns, assuming great importance for both the history of Portugal and Contemporary World History, with particular emphasis on the intervening nations: Portugal, United Kingdom, France, Spain, and indirectly for the Portuguese overseas territories, including Brazil.

To the historical, strategic and symbolic value, we add the heritage value: provisional fortifications, built using original methods of construction, deployed in areas with strong anthropogenic pressure, the Lines of Tor-

res Vedras are currently in a good degree of preservation.

The spirit of sacrifice of those who fought against the French by integrating the allied forces, building fortifications or abandoning their homes and destroying their property, depriving the invading army of goods on the ground but at the same time jeopardizing the livelihoods of the native countrymen and the country's future.

What is at stake here is the preservation of the memory of the truly extraordinary circumstances surrounding the genial design and construction of semi-permanent fortification works built on land using only local resources. Beyond the strategic role that they had played in the past, nowadays they give a renovated and motivational interest due to its historical, cultural and tourist importance.

The support of the EEA Grants enabled the rehabilitation and conservation of this unique European military and archeological heritage.

The HRLTV is deeply rooted in the territory, the landscape and heritage of the different villages where these military structures are implemented. We are philosophically engaged with the local development of the different villages where these structures are located, combining cultural heritage tourism with wine tourism, natural tourism and religious tourism empowering other monumental structures and natural sites (hills & mountains tourism) with beach tourism and food tourism.

Beyond any doubts for us the innovative aspect has to do with the level of cooperation already established across the six municipalities and the creation of an association, with the specific responsibility to manage THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 81

and maintain this set of unique European Heritage.

encourages a new audience to discover the region.

In September 2013, the RHLTV put in an application for the Historical Route of the Lines of Torres Vedras to be considered for one of the most prestigious international awards – the Europa Nostra Awards - putting the focus on the work of safeguarding, conservation and restoration developed in recent years in the heritage of the Lines of Torres Vedras.

The strong and deep level of cooperation between the six municipalities allowed the rehabilitation of the military structures and the creation of the Historical Route of Lines of Torres Vedras. It is a quite singular set of structures which combine several professional skills such as archaeology, environment (fauna and flora), landscape, European and Portuguese History, geology, military strategy and tactics based on a vast number of redoubts, strongholds and earthen fortifications that gain an added value because they operate as one unique line, quickly adapting to the set of enemy forces facing them, reacting as a unique living organism, combining their strengths (higher defensive positions, enhanced by the morphology of the landscape, and a smart communication system with many optical sign poles) and several military roads allowing efficient and swift liaisons between the East and West front and

On March 20, in Brussels, it was announced that the HRLTV was part of the 27 projects awarded with the Europa Nostra Awards 2014 in the category of Conservation.

For the award the jury took into account several factors, such as: the importance of preserving this military structure, the role it played in Portuguese and European history; numerous inter-related advantages to the different authorities involved throughout HRLTV; and the possibility that the new route 82 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

between the northern and the southern lines (i.e. the 1st and 2nd defensive Lines).

In a similar way to what occurred 200 years ago the regional authorities and local populations are setting the tune: altogether they have developed a profound level of cooperation and are engaged in facing with one voice the challenge of tourism and sustainable development.

One of our major outcomes has to do with quality of the Human Resources involved throughout this entire joint co-operation. The results achieved for far are directly related to the talents and quality of the work of all those that made possible the implementation of HRLTV. A core group of 12 brave and hardworking people, proud of this unique European heritage, from different scientific backgrounds are responsible for the everyday management of the Historical Route of Lines of Torres Vedras. The staff hold special degrees, and are postgraduates and PhD’s in history, archaeology, anthropology, landscape architecture, geology, geography, project management, museum studies, cultural communication, tourism, military engineering, environment engineering, and archives.

All partners have a strong will and commitment to take the HRLTV to the next level of excellence. It is very rare to develop these kinds of archaeological interventions (excavations and diggings) in military structures of the early 19th century composed mainly of rammed earth. We were pioneers in developing and establishing a good set of practices regarding the specificity of this heritage, namely for the conservation of the military works and guidelines for correct vegetation and flora maintenance.

Our level of excellence is deeply rooted in the level of conservation of this set of military structures; the decision to safeguard, legally protect and rehabilitate these two military defensive lines is of paramount importance in order to achieve a sustainable tourism which will add to the regional development already in action. The HRLTV mandated is very clear in the purpose and direction to follow during this entire joint co-operation, which is still ongoing and we guess it will become a never ending process.

The HRLTV has developed since 2006 a close collaboration with several partners (The Portuguese Army and the British Historical Society of Portugal), which occasionally provide extra manpower, a bounty of several volunteers have been participating across different activities (university trainees for the archaeological summer field works, local scouts groups in outdoor activities, local residents from the different communities where the military works are located, and last but not least, a workforce from the military forces, mainly the Portuguese army).

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19.

A Source Of Inspiration Textile Centre Haslach and the Museum of Weaving Austrian Museum of the year 2014

Christina Leitner DIRECTOR

Andreas Selzer weaving, exhibitions and economics ≥ Textile Centre Haslach stahlmuhle 4 a-4170 haslach austria ≥ +43 7289 72300 ≥ office@textiles-zentrum-haslach.at www.textiles-zentrum-haslach.at

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1. The Framework The market town of Haslach is situated in the north of Austria close to the German and Czech borders. The hills of the Mühlviertel [literally: district of the mills] has been renowned for growing flax and making linen since the Middle Ages. Haslach had always played an important role in the region as its markets were known far and wide attracting merchants and weavers from near and far who bought and sold goods and brought influences from outside. Even though the town was small, it had always been liberal-minded.

In the course of industrialisation the formerly domestic production transferred to the factory. Most of the 25 weaving mills in Haslach were small or medium-sized. The only exception was Messrs. Vonwiller, a large enterprise which employed hundreds of people and had a considerable influence on the economic, social and cultural life of Haslach. The company was well known and its products were exported to many countries all over the world even before 1900. Amazing sample books of luxurious jacquard weaves which are now kept in the archives of the Textile Centre Haslach bear witness to the high quality of the fabrics produced then.

Built on a promontory rock the architectonically interesting factory complex has been dominating the appearance of Haslach for almost 200 years, and as an identity-establishing landmark has been a symbol for the erstwhile importance of weaving in the town.

When after many highs and lows the formerly so renowned Vonwiller textile factory had to close down in 1999, the municipality of Haslach saw itself confronted with an industrial ruin in the middle of the town, now being a symbol of the decline of the once flourishing textile production of the Mühlvi-

ertel. Thanks to some dedicated regional politicians, visionary creative people and architects in the town the property could be purchased, and from 2002 onwards substantially revitalised and put to new uses with the help of funds from the EU and the provincial government. In the course of these developments a second factory building in the immediate vicinity could also be purchased and incorporated into the new concept. Today there are more people employed in the entire complex than immediately before the closing-down of Messrs. Vonwiller. The extensive area is home to various welfare, cultural and educational institutions, enterprises, halls for events, a restaurant, and since 2012 the Textile Centre Haslach.

2. Formation Of The Textile Centre Haslach The cornerstone for the formation of the Textile Centre Haslach was the decision to move the local Museum of Weaving which had been founded in the 1970s to the historical Vonwiller factory buildings. The contents of the old museum had impressively documented local textile history with many interesting exhibits.

But in the course of time the museum had aged and its appearance was no longer upto-date. As part of the relocation the museum was to have an entirely new concept and trace an arc to the presence. To this purpose a team of textile artists, artists, architects, retired weavers, sponsors and politicians in charge was formed; there was also a cooperation with the textile department of Linz University of the Arts. When the team started its work it soon became clear that nobody wanted to “just” relocate the museum to the Vonwiller building, but that other institutions working in the textile field in Haslach wanted to be included IN the overall concept. During a trip to innovative museums in Germany and Holland a joint vision began to emerge, and gradually it became apparent that there WAS THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 85

an abundance of textile treasures hidden in our own town. This was how the vision of the Textile Centre of Haslach uniting several institutions with different textile focusses under one roof came into being.

3. The Partners In The Textile Centre Haslach The basic idea of the Textile Centre Haslach is to bring together history and the presence of textile activity in the Mühlviertel. Apart from the local Museum of Weaving, small production enterprises, cultural associations, possibilities for courses and training were to be united in order to carry on spinning the thread of the textile tradition of the Mühlviertel. A network of five partners was created, who presented themselves jointly to the public as the Textile Centre Haslach, a place where a broad variety of textile themes could be experienced by the visitors. Multiple synergies arose between the partners thus counteracting the general tendency of an exodus of textile culture.

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The following partners form the Textile Centre Haslach: > The newly designed Museum of Weaving forms the heart of the Textile Centre Haslach for visitors. It explains the traditional process of preparing the flax as well as the development from hand loom to Jacquard machine. In the “treasure chamber” visitors can delve into a wealth of colours and patterns and try their hand on many things. A large textile archive containing a collection of historical sample books which is important beyond the region as a source of inspiration for students, artists and researchers. > The Manufaktur Haslach is a socio-economic enterprise where various felted products, yarns and fabrics are made from the wool produced by regional sheep farmers.

In the course of a guided tour through the MUSEUM the production can be visited and the actual steps of making fabric are demonstrated on running machines. This enterprise provides temporary workplaces for people

who need help in finding their way back into the labour market. > Each year for more than 20 years the cultural association Textile Kultur Haslach has been organising a Textile Symposium with courses, exhibitions of textile art, weavers’ markets, lectures, etc. which is well known internationally in the art and craft scene.

There are rooms for workshops and areas for special exhibitions available in the Textile Centre Haslach, and the international connections are felt all over the museum. > When the Textile College at Haslach had to close down, modern power looms from its training workshops were obtained for the Textile Centre Haslach. Within the scope of the 2012 newly established University course “Shuttle” students can now develop their own weaves, and work on the interface between art, design and machine production.

es small series of fabrics and products for the in-house shop, and also takes commissions for metre lengths of exclusive weaves from artists, architects or fashion labels.

The individual partners pool the textile forces at Haslach, cross-fertilize each other, exchange competences and refer visitors and customers to each other. However, eight years elapsed until this structure actually began to work and became a reality after being a vague vision. The important key for the success of the project was the strong identification of the persons involved, who worked with their own hands and with a high degree of responsibility, and who were always certain that life would return to these spaces with their great textile history. Today Haslach is proud again to be a weavers’ town, a fact which was quite unthinkable a few years ago.

> The looms from the former textile college are also used by the Weberie, which producTHE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 87

20.

Creating An Atmosphere To Suit The Narrative Of The Novel

Museum of Innocence, Istanbul, Turkey european museum forum / European Museum of the Year Award 2014

Onur Karaoğlu director ≥ Masumiyet Müzesi Çukurcuma Caddesi, Dalgıç Çıkmazı 2 34425, Beyoğlu istanbul Türkiye ≥ + 90 212 252 97 38 ≥ info@masumiyetmuzesi.org en.masumiyetmuzesi.org ≥ facebook: TheMuseumOfInnocence twitter: @MasumiyetMzesi

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The Museum of Innocence is both a novel by Orhan Pamuk and a museum he has set up.

From the very beginnings of the project, since the 1990s, Pamuk has conceived of novel and museum together. The novel, which is about love, is set between 1974 and the early ’00s, and describes life in Istanbul between 1950 and 2000 through memories and flashbacks centered around two families – one wealthy, the other lower middle class. The museum presents what the novel’s characters used, wore, heard, saw, collected and dreamed of, all meticulously arranged in boxes and display cabinets. It is not essential to have read the book in order to enjoy the museum, just as it is not necessary to have visited the museum in order to fully enjoy the book. But those who have read the novel will better grasp the many connotations of the museum, and those who have visited the museum will discover many nuances they had missed when reading the book.

The building became the first object of the collection, however in the museum thousands of objects would have been exhibited. In the novel The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk describes how Kemal collects his lover Füsun’s belongings and the logic behind how he sets them out in the museum. Visitors to the museum are greeted by a striking display composed of the stubs of 4213 cigarettes smoked by the novel’s protagonist Füsun. With every floor climbed, guests are drawn further and further into the novel and into the feel of life during the period when it is set. Just as in the novel, the attic contains the room where Kemal spent the last years of his life, and also features the manuscript of the novel, and the Pamuk’s preliminary drawings and designs for the museum.

Pamuk wrote the novel over the years by collecting and looking at these objects one sees inside the museum. If he was to open the museum with all the objects that the characters of the novel once touched, used or dreamed they would tell a different story, create a different mood and it would be smart to find the objects first which are ranging from cinema tickets to matchsticks, liquor bottles to doorknobs, and small ornaments to photographs. Pamuk wrote about the objects in relation to the characters of the novel. By doing that, while he was making the museum he wouldn't have wasted his time to look for the objects. Story also tells us some of the characters lived in the building before it was converted into a museum. Pamuk had the idea of setting a story in a real, existing building in Istanbul, and then manipulating the story in such a way that the building in the end turns out to be a museum and making it and opening was the whole project.

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Upon completion of the novel and over the course of four years in which the museum was developed, the thousands of objects previously stored in Pamuk’s office and home were joined by many other items and artworks, videos, photographs and sound installations that evoke Istanbul’s past. What took the time most was placing in the boxes the objects that he collected in the years of writing the novel. Objects were coming from so many different sources. How to put them in the boxes that would look nice and suggest a relationship? Having only the collection was not enough at this point. For example, Pamuk collected the matches that people in Istanbul used for years. Though, he couldn't use them since he couldn't find a way to place them looking nice in the museum. Exhibiting them like in a government museum was not something that he intended. Pamuk describes this in the manifesto that he wrote for the muse90 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

um "...Demonstrating the wealth of Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Iranian, or Turkish history and culture is not an issue—it must be done, of course, but it is not difficult to do. The real challenge is to use museums to tell, with the same brilliance, depth, and power, the stories of the individual human beings living in these countries."

The novel has eighty-three chapters. The museum, also has eighty-three boxes, or vitrins. Each chapter has a chapter heading such as Merhamet Apartment. The 7th chapter of the novel is Merhamet Apartment.

When you come to the museum you will see the 7th box is called with the same title. All the prominent objects that are described in the novel are placed in these cabinets over the four floors of the museum. The boxes follow not realistically but sentimentally the logic of the novel, story.

Orhan Pamuk conceived the Museum of Innocence over a long period of time, planning it word by word, object by object, image by image, before it first opened its doors on 27th April 2012, following the publication of the novel The Museum of Innocence in 2008.

Around a hundred thousand people have visited the Museum of Innocence over the past two and a half years. Half of these visitors have come from abroad. 15% of visitors have entered the museum for free, using the ticket included in the last chapter of the novel The Museum of Innocence, and 25% of visitors toured the museum with an audio guide prepared and narrated by Orhan Pamuk.

While The Museum Of Innocence is a museum of a fiction, it is also a little museum of ‘Istanbul Life in the second half of the 20th century’. The Museum Of Innocence won European Museum Of The Year Award in 2014.

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Connecting Cultures In The Historical Past

Restoration of the Saryazd Citadel, Yazd, Islamic Republic of Iran UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation - Award of Distinction 2014

Majid Haji Gholam Saryazdi manager, farafar holding company, author

Dr Nasser Kaikheaei mission at iranian embassy in vienna, presenter ≥ restoration and development of arg-e saryazd company rabate nou, saryazd village 20th kilometre of yazd-kerman road yazd 8981163713 islamic republic of iran ≥ majid_saryazdi@yahoo.com WWW.saryazdi.ir

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History, the state of the historical steps movement, and Human Evolution have always been interesting to the people of the world. It seems that one of the ways to reach the Global Village is the connection between the history of people and the nations of the world.

It makes the role of sociologists more important and more serious. Furthermore, people have always thought about their history and have always been eager to become aware of their cultures, customs and past events of their ethnicity and nationality. Even many nations are trying to complete the family tree of their ancestors. It is natural that the only way to reach what is mentioned is to collect anything that has been left for us from the past, such as: historical books and objects, verbal culture which has been conveyed orally from the past, and historical monuments (as one of the most important ones). We can get all our answers by analyzing, investigating, and maybe developing a matrix from whatever remained from the past. By completing the missing parts of the matrix we will be able to connect the history of the world's different races and nations; achieving one of the ways to a utopian Global Village, and as a result reach unity, co-existence, and a world of peace and friendship for all nations and religions. In fact, after the old definitions of development, balanced development, and sustainable development we will be able to approach the definition of Development as Human Happiness.

The above introduction was presented for it is better to consider restoration and protection of monuments from another aspect. It is better to pay attention to the importance of restoration and protection of monuments, apart from what is related to Cultural heritage (Buildings dimensions) and even tourism. Suppose the fourth dimension of these

monuments (in addition to the length, width and height) are people who were the builders and users of them and experienced events, thoughts, bitter and sweet memories there.

After all that was mentioned, my own special interest concerns the old culture and civilization of my country, ancestors, and ethnicity (Yazd), combining my great experiences of development activities, urban management and tourism, and also my interest in society and this made me establish the Arg -e- Saryazd Development Company 8 years ago. I have decided, since then, to restore, repair and protect all the monuments located within the historic village of Saryazd (located 25 km southeast of Yazd).

As you know, Yazd was one of the oldest settlements of human beings in which life still exists. Historians estimate that Yazd goes back 6000 years.

Historians believe that Saryazd was the oldest site of the current city of Yazd the location the present monuments which go back 2400 years. One of the significant monuments of this village is the Castle of Saryazd which goes back 1700 years and still looks great across the desert. It seems that this monument has the largest and highest infrastructure and is the only monument in the world which is constructed from mud and clay. The monument is about 20,000 square meters and has four floors. In some history books in Iran this monument is mentioned as the meeting place of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In 1975, England produced the movie The Queen of Sheba in this castle.

Being located on the Silk Road, and having a moat all around it and internal and external towers and walls, has made this castle a safe deposit place throughout history. There are 500 small rooms at the core of the castle

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in which businessmen would hand over their money and jewelry for safekeeping. So the castle of Saryazd can be named as the oldest bank box of the world. This castle also had services, administration, and military parts for protecting the things which had been given for safekeeping.

The current village of Saryazd, known as Arg-e Saryazd, has eighteen historically significant monuments (going back 2000 years).

After seriously pursuing and getting a government permit, the Arg -e Saryazd Development Company took on the responsibility of restoring these monuments. Other historical monuments of this village are different caravansaries, chapar khaneh, baths, mosques, Pakaneh qanat, ab anbar, Farafar’s gate, and one of the most important ones, Farafar- A buried city.

Research stages are being undertaken to gain a government permit in order to explore the Farafar buried city, which goes back 94 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

more than 2400 years. It seems that the first stages of exploration will start late next year.

Considering the state budget, I was aware that doing such a great and human task of protecting these monuments and the transition of this human trust to the next generations is not possible. So I decided to take action by developing a matrix, defying the complete economic cycle, and procuring the necessary funds from my own budget. Beside the task of restoring, I have always paid attention to different societies and local cultures.

Obviously, many studies must have been undertaken about human societies and their cultures from the past to the present, and the location and structure of the Saryazd monuments. Hanooks must also have been developed for restoring each of these monuments. All these proceedings were undertaken by Bana sakht-e Khavar, which is an architecture and design consulting company

and owned by me. In my opinion, being economical and becoming economical are the two conditions for the continuation of any action. By defining and completing Arg-e Saryazd, and gaining the government permit, this place was approved as the best tourism region. So, by using this historical place as a tourism region, we have made this plan economical in order to continue the task of restoring and protecting it.

years old monument without electricity), historical baths, and great qanats.

The present tourism collection won the top prize in UNESCO Asia – Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation 2014. Receiving this prize provided more encouragement and interest in the completion of this project.

Currently, the restoration of the oldest mud and clay hotel of the world is being carried out in Seljuq caravanserai, which goes back more than 1000 years, and will be ready to be put into operation by early next year. Different facilities are available, and being improved, and will be exploitable in Arg-e Saryazd, such as: short trips by a camel through the desert, observing stars, motorcycling through the desert, visiting historical places, staying in historical buildings which go back more than a hundred years, visiting Aramesh lake in the desert, visiting the Dark Carvansarai (a 800 THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 95

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The Memory Palace, A Report On The Principles And The Choices 96 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

National Archives: The Memory Palace the hague, The Netherlands Museums + Heritage Awards 2014 International Award

Nancy Hovingh project manager, exhibitions ≥ Nationaal Archief P.O. Box 90520 2509 LM The Hague The NetherlaAnds ≥ info@nationaalarchief.nl www.gahetna.nl ≥ Twitter: gahetNA Facebook: Nationaal Archief Flickr: Nationaal Archief

After a huge remodelling - with the goal to further the use of the collection - the new visitors’ centre of the National Archive opened in October 2013 with the inaugural exhibition ‘The Memory Palace – with your head in the archives’.

The brief for this inaugural exhibition was stated in four goals - this is how we have tried to achieve them: 1. To acquaint the public to the wealth and scope of the collection The general principle for the exhibition was that we were not going make a treasure trove display, we wanted to tell stories. Stories that are hidden within the documents. Jointly, they should represent different periods from history and it should be possible to make a link between a personal story and a wider historical perspective. Also, the different types of archive should to be given a higher profile. And the stories must be relevant and preferably have an up to date aspect.

Finally 11 stories were selected: • Navigating through the Middle Ages (11791598) • War in the Peking Legation Quarter (19091919) • Image-building in the Golden Age (15471619) • Reluctant hero (1944-1946) •‘Once There Was a Clever Girl’ (1602-1799) • Europapas (1948-1957) • The Da Vinci of the North (1495-1562)

•'Welcomed home with the smell of Brussels sprouts’ (1946-1970) • Going to Berbice! (1792-1794) • Divorce equals suffering (1965-1971) 2. To give a very wide public easy access to the collection By exhibiting documents, you offer a different kind of acces to the collection. At first sight however, archival documents do not appear very attractive and easy to understand. Our challenge is to attract attention to them and make it possible to discover the stories hidden in them.

We decided only to present original documents, with a maximum of 15 documents per story. We have tried to seek variety with 3D objects on loan and moving images and sound. And we looked for a way to exhibit the documents in a surprising and new context and design to create an atmosphere that invites people to come and see.

Archival documents are often hard to read, so we decided that all original handwritten documents are to be made digitally legible with specially developed software.

We have tried as much as possible to make a connection with our own times and the subjects that have a meaning in modern society when we selected the stories. For each story we chose an artist who interprets the story and through its contemporary language brings it closer to today.

In the case of two stories we asked visitors to look back and participate by e-mailing us their stories or experiences.

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≥ The Da Vinci of the North (3D animators Los Digitalos)

The National Archive forms the ‘national memory’ of the Netherlands through almost 125 kilometres of documents, over 300,000 maps and drawings and about 15 million photographs. Its mission is serving every person’s right to information and giving an insight into the past of the Netherlands.

> The Europapas (artists and storytellers Szostak and Schellekens)

3. To inspire visitors to use the collection By asking various artists from different disciplines to work with the stories, the exhibition offers the visitor a varied menu. In addition visitors can see what kind of expressions and products archival research can lead to.

Behind the idea of involving various artists, also lies the idea of the dissemination. For example, the performance theatre artist Jaime Ibanez has devised for the story ‘Going to Berbice!’ had its premiere at the Oerol Festival and has been shown in various festivals around the country in 2014. The modern version of the old folk song ‘Once there was a clever girl’ actor and singer Ricky Koole wrote for our tale about women in the Dutch East India Company, was included in her own musical show with which she is touring the Dutch theatres in 2014/15.

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In the middle of the exhibition is a data visualization installation in which the collection of the National Archives is depicted as a map of the world (archival research as a journey of discovery). The image is based on the database that contains information about all the archives and their use.

The continents in the data visualization represent the five main elements of the collection.The countries in these continents are a further subdivision and the cities represent the archives. Visitors can touch the cities to see which archives are part of the collection.

The subjects shown at the edge of the screen are links to further information about the collection and how it is being used in our reading rooms.

At the foot of the screen you can select the stories from the exhibition and see the journeys we have made in making the exhibition.

4. To surprise visitors in more ways than one The probably dusty and hermetic image of an archive which potential visitors harbour had to be demolished to start with and be replaced with an atmosphere which invited a mood of discovery and accommodated the abundance of documents without being overwhelming or being a killjoy. Moreover, information had to be offered in a contemporary way.

A partnership was desired with Jan Blokker, a renowned historian who is popular with the wider public. His assignment was to write an overarching story in which the importance of keeping archives would become obvious.

The Memory Palace has eleven cabinets where the stories are told. The central oval space of the castle features the archive collection itself, transposed into the data visualization. Coloured lights lend an ambience to the otherwise darkened palace.

The boxes give the visitor the impression that they are wandering around in the archives of the personages who are the centre of the stories.

Every space has been given its own ambience. And so the exhibition offers something for each visitor.

Have a look at the exhibition: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=eMMiMQCn_GM

≥ Divorce equals suffering (theatre group Wunderbaum)

He turned it into a modern fairy-tale in which a wise king finds scraps of paper which are borne on the wind and he likes to know exactly where they came from and what they are. He selects eleven people to travel and investigate. After many years they return and as they each tell their tales and show their treasures, it seems as though they are holding something back. On the last day it is revealed: this far flung and strange country does not exist at all, the travellers went into the archives and there they explored the past. Finally, the king decided to open the cabinets to all his subjects and to give everybody the opportunity to acquaint themselves with that past.

This story formed the basis for the design by Todd van Hulzen in collaboration with Studio Louter. His set from archive boxes is an allusion to the collection and the stories hidden in them, now revealed to the public. It is also a pun on ‘reconstructing’ history with the help of archival documents as building blocks.

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A Palace Of Culture And A Space Of Leisure

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Nanjing Museum, Nanjig, China chinese Museum Association - most innovative museums award 2014

Wang Qizhi vice director ≥ nanjing museum 321 East Zhangshan Road Nanjing, Jiangsu China ≥ +025-84807923 ≥ www.njmuseum.com

Since its reopening in November 2013, Nanjing Museum comes back with a fresh look.

Today’s Nanjing Museum, with diversity and comprehensiveness as its aim, is more than a cultural palace, but a leisure space, where you may experience the pleasure of learning and artistic appreciation or spend a casual afternoon with your family or friends.

It now includes six galleries respectively dedicated to history, art, temporary exhibitions, digital representation, intangible heritage, and the society and culture of the Republic Period. The Gallery of History presents the “Ancient Civilization of Jiangsu” by displaying massive artifacts and specimens and allowing the objects to speak for themselves; the Gallery of Temporary Exhibitions with its 10 exhibition halls is able to hold various exhibitions showcasing the diverse cultures of China and the world; the Gallery of Art, equipped with 8 halls, exhibits artistic works according to their categories or their authors; the Digital Gallery, focused on digital media and interaction, provides a new and innovative visiting experience; the Republican Gallery aims to show the urban life during that period by reproducing the street scenes of the time; the Gallery of Intangible Heritage intro-

duces the traditional craftsmanship and artistic skills and the folk customs of Jiangsu Province through live performances.

Nanjing Museum is above all a cultural palace. The addition of the new extension allows the museum to showcase considerably more of its holding of some 420,000 pieces, of which more than 2,000 are national treasures. The permanent exhibitions present an outline of Jiangsu’s historical development, showcase those local histories and cultures with distinctive features, and illustrate the roles that Jiangsu has played in Chinese history and the contributions that Jiangsu has made to Chinese civilization. Apart from permanent exhibitions, it also provides several galleries to host special national and international exhibitions, expanding its already active exchanges with foreign museums from Australia to Mexico. All of our exhibitions are based on the professional knowledge of the six research institutions - Archaeology, Conservation, Ancient Architecture, Ancient Art, Intangible Heritage, and Exhibitions. Accuracy is our foremost standard when we curate every exhibition, and all the departments and all the staff members contribute to the forming of every exhibition.

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More than just a cultural palace, Nanjing Museum is a space of leisure, too.

The most prominent is the design of the Republican gallery, which aims to provide the audience with a live experience back to the 1930s through recreating a street scene. To make such visiting experience more “real”, our acquisition team tried all possible means to acquire authentic items from that time to set and decorate the street and the shops in it, including many details, even the cigar box on the table of the bar, the lamp on the desk of the Post Office, the phonograph in the cafeteria and the music played on the phonograph. Authentic items incorporated in the set scenes, memories brought into reality, the exhibition turns into a participative experience. Visitors can walk into a retro coffee house and have a real cup of coffee, walk into a variety shop and buy some rouge, or walk into a bookstore and scan old books for a while.

Similarly in the Digital Gallery, there are many electronic devices which help visitors 102 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

learn more about the details of the objects.

You may open a window on the wall and see the ancient traders peddling goods in the town, which is a part of an old painting aiming to capture the daily life of ordinary people. You may work out a puzzle and learn the interior structure of an ancient vessel. You may play a video game and know how to kill the enemy in the wars of the past. Or you may share your comments and photos by using a QR code.

What is more, we carry out diverse social programmes oriented for visitors of different age groups. Since 2014, we have started a program called “Our Festivals”. We hold different activities around Chinese traditional festivals and some Western festivals which are popular in China. In the Gallery of Intangible Heritage, from time to time, we invite inheritors of traditional art, such as paper cutting, lantern making and tea ceremonies, to perform for visitors. School children are always welcome to join them.

We even have a specialized exhibition for the blind, where the blind can feel the charm of Chinese civilization by touching the replicas and listening to the interpretation. Beyond all this, after the reconstruction, we have larger public spaces dedicated to shopping and dining. Whenever they are tired, visitors can always find space to have a rest and cheer up.

So that is what we have done in the past year.

tions to oral performances, from museum stores to video games. The entire Nanjing Museum staff shares responsibility for engaging visitors and thereby presents content that engages, enlightens, and inspires. Visitors are experiencing the Nanjing Museum’s remarkable collections, highlighting the triumphs of human creativity, like never before, as evidenced by one and a half years of record-breaking attendance.

“The Most innovative Museums Award” was set up by the Chinese Museum Association in 2012, which is aimed at choosing two to three museums which have made great achievements and exerted great social influence in such aspects as exhibitions and displays, programmes, management philosophy and operation modes in the past year. And Nanjing Museum is honored with the award in 2014. The key to our success has been the delivering of a fresh approach to a classic art museum. We no longer see visitors as learners but as participants, and try to interest them from every aspect, from social programs to exhibitions, from scene reproducTHE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 103

Creating Extraordinary Learning Experiences With The Power To Transform

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Children's Museum of Indianapolis, indianapolis, United States National Medal for Museum and Library Service 2014

Christian G. Carron Director of Collections ≥ Children’s Museum of Indianapolis 3000 North Meridian St. Indianapolis, Indiana 46208-4716 USA ≥ chrisc@childrensmuseum.org www.childrensmuseum.org ≥ TWITTER: @tcmindy facebook: childrensmuseum

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The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is a non-profit institution committed to creating extraordinary learning experiences across the arts, sciences and humanities that have the power to transform the lives of children and families. Founded in 1925, it is the world’s largest children’s museum. Situated on 29 urban acres in the American Midwestern city of Indianapolis, the 475,000 square foot, five-level museum houses eleven major thematic exhibitions, three temporary galleries, a children’s theater, planetarium, and a collection of more than 120,000 artifacts and specimens. Its 1.2 million annual visitors consistently place it among the top twenty most visited museums in North America.

Creating experiences that really have the power to transform the lives of children and families is a lofty goal. Those of us who work in museums and heritage institutions believe that our sites, collections, exhibitions and programs are important and have the potential to change people’s lives. But do they really? How does The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis create its extraordinary learning experiences, and how does it measure whether they actually have the power to transform?

Family Learning and Memories Unlike most museums that are focused on a specific subject (Paleontology, Archaeology) or historical site (battlefield, castle), or artifact type (modern art, ceramics), The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is driven by a specific audience: families with children. Besides children who come through its doors as a part of a formal school group, the majority of its visitors are children who visit as part of a larger family unit with parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles, and siblings. These groups are multi-generational and often include members at different developmental life stages and who come to the museum for

different reasons. Some are knowledgeable museum-goers, but for many The Children’s Museum is their first ever museum experience. They represent different generations, but have come together to have a quality shared experience, and even to create new family memories.

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis studies how these families interact and learn together in its exhibits and programs, and then designs its experiences to meet specific goals aimed at increasing the success of these interactions. Over time, The Children’s Museum has developed systems for measuring desired behaviors to determine if families are learning together. Its Family Learning Assessment System (FLAS) measures how successfully family learning occurs in its family programs. The Assessment of Learning Families in Exhibits (ALFIE) uses social science evaluative tools like questionnaires, prototyping, and tracking and timing to measure family learning interactions and behaviors within exhibitions. More recently, with this significant base of knowledge about what inspires learning and extraordinary experiences in programs and exhibitions, the museum has begun to develop a new system, the Family Learning Object Research and Evaluation System (FLORES), which will enable curators to make decisions about which artifacts and specimens should be added to the collection by predicting whether the objects will be interesting to families and will foster family learning.

Fun, Imaginative, and Real All of this results in museum experiences that are truly unique. While there are many science centers, art galleries and history museums in the United States, few create exhibitions aimed at the kind of collective learning that happens among family members at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

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There are also many children’s museums in the United States, but only a handful of them utilize the kinds of real and iconic artifacts and specimens that can be found in The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’ experiences.

These include articulated Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops fossils in Dinosphere, one of the largest displays of juvenile dinosaurs in the world. They also include coins, anchors and cannons from Columbus-era shipwrecks in the Caribbean in the permanent National Geographic Treasures of the Earth exhibition. These experiences also include working paleontology and archaeology labs, where scientists and conservators work in full view and even reach of visitors, who are encouraged to ask questions and even participate in the processes used to prepare and stabilize the objects.

Professional Actors Inside Exhibits And Galleries The commitment to the “real” also includes the employment of professional actors inside galleries, where they interact with visitors in theatrical performances to bring discussions 106 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

of history to life. In The Power of Children: Making a Difference, traditional didactic displays surround immersive theatrical spaces focused on the stories of three 20th-century children who fought intolerance and discrimination to make a positive difference in their worlds: the tremendous message of hope of Anne Frank amidst the 1940s Holocaust; the bravery of Ruby Bridges who was among the first black students to integrate the white school system of New Orleans in the 1960s; and the tenacity of Indiana teenager Ryan White who fought fear and misinformation about AIDs in the 1980s.

Commitment To Vitality Of The Community The Children's Museum of Indianapolis also takes its commitment to transforming the lives of children and families outside of its walls and into its community. Situated in a once vibrant area of the city that has experienced profound urban decay, the museum has become a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization and education. Working together with community leaders, the museum led

the creation of a Quality of Life Plan for area residents. The museum set aside funds for the construction or rehabilitation of neighborhood homes, and led the improvement of major traffic corridors in its area with new sidewalks, landscaping, improved outdoor lighting, and safety measures. In 2000 it established InfoZone in partnership with Indianapolis Public Library, the only public library branch located inside a museum in the United States. The museum’s service to low-income and underserved audiences includes free memberships, special free days and access passes, preschool scholarships, neighborhood summer camps, after school programs, and youth volunteer opportunities.

Making A Difference, One Life At A Time Despite rigorous testing and evaluation, sometimes the best way to measure whether a museum can transform lives is one personal story at a time. One such example presented itself when eight year old boy Spencer Hahn testified to U.S. senators and

congressmen on Capitol Hill about how The Children's Museum of Indianapolis changed his life. Before he was even born Spencer suffered a neo-natal stroke, which induced symptoms of cerebral palsy, grand mal seizures, and autism spectrum disorder. He was never expected to walk or talk, so his mother made a new plan focused on how Spencer could be happy. Using her membership to The Children's Museum of Indianapolis they visited weekly. There they found an environment where he felt happy, safe, and stimulated. Over time he was befriended by museum staff, who witnessed many developmental milestones he was never expected to pass. He took his first steps at the museum, and spoke his first words there as well. In 2014 his inspiring story led the American Alliance of Museums to name Spencer as one of two Great American Museum Advocates, and was a factor in the presentation of the National Medal for Museum and Library Service to The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

Yes, museums do have the power to transform the lives of children and families.

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Work With Volunteers, A Special Challenge

Saurer Museum, Arbon, Switzerland European Museum Forum / Silletto Prize 2014

Rudolf Baer president OCS ≥ Saurer Museum Weitegasse 6 CH-9320 Arbon Switzerland ≥ baerrudolf@swissonline.ch www.saureroldtimer.ch ≥ facebook: Saurer-Museum-Arbon/

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Saving The Heritage At The Eleventh Hour „The SAURER Museum Arbon fulfils the three conditions any museum needs to fulfil: • A unique and highly valuable collection • An archive, active research and hands-on work on the collection itself • An attractive and appealing presentation of the collection, accessible to the public, combined with a gastronomic element – simply wonderful [wunderbar]!

The achievement of this large collective of volunteers, led enthusiastically and professionally

by Ruedi Baer, President of the Oldtimer Club Saurer, is astonishing and touches me on a personal level. This museum is of unquestionable value to the city of Arbon, both for its relationship with our history and understanding of our heritage ...

At the eleventh hour, the knowledge, insights and wisdom of the last generation of SAURER employees were saved alongside many pieces of the museum’s collection, providing a younger generation access to this legacy. This will help to strengthen Arbon’s identity and will allow us to positively connect with and relive the history of SAURER. ...

of industrial production in Arbon. And with it a workforce of 6,000 strong in a town of 13,000 inhabitants lost their jobs. At the centre of this project stood therefore the task of giving back to the citizens of Arbon a heart and soul by rediscovering the history of Arbon and restoring pride in its connection to 150 years of the SAURER Corporation. The search for an ideal location for the museum had to be aligned with this intention and took several years to complete as the museum needed to find a place close to the city centre, in a historical location and close to the main tourist attraction – Arbon’s beautiful lake front.

The Result It needs to be borne in mind that this project is the work of amateurs – in the true sense of the word. The results are impressive: • The museum has played and plays an important role in restoring the connection between Arbon’s citizens and their industrial heritage, restoring pride in their past and their achievements.

The Project

• At the very last minute, the museum succeeded in saving a number of invaluable engineering feats from the scrapyard, such as an embroidery machine from 1932, controlled by a mechanical computer. Yet the salvaged machine doesn’t just rest in the museum. The volunteers have managed to reassemble it; bring it back to life and it now produces a wide range of laces. Upon seeing the machine in action and the SAURER trucks alongside, a former SAURER employee who had lost his job in 1986 proudly proclaimed: “You’ve given me back my soul”.

On February 27th 1987, the last SAURER 10DM heavy goods vehicle left the production line in Arbon. Painted in standard camouflage green and built for the Swiss Army, it represents the disheartening end of an area

• Experts from both the noisy textile domain and the noisy and smelly combustion engines working alongside each other enriched the experience of all volunteers involved. One big team has been formed.

(Extract from the honorific speech of the mayor of Arbon, Martin Kloeti, on occasion of the reopening of the SAURER Museum Arbon, may 1st 2010)

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• The entire museum can be enjoyed independently, with all objects carefully labelled with their most important characteristics.

Additionally, the three generations of the Saurer family are portrayed and the foyer provides historical background to the industrial revolution's important period, stretching both beyond the content of the exposition and almost beyond the workshop walls themselves.

• The museum also caters to the youngest fans of heavy machinery – several times a year, the museum welcomes school children of all ages for dedicated tours, adapted to the age of the visitors. After observing the production of a piece of lace, the school children cut and paste the band according to their own tastes before going on a tour with one of the world’s tiniest postal busses.

The museum very much represents a European history lesson, now more relevant than ever. Founded by the German immigrant Franz Saurer, both sales and production began to spread and by the time Hippolyt Saurer took the helm, trucks and buses were 110 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

exported to more than 50 countries and produced in France, Germany, Austria, Italy and the United Kingdom, making SAURER one of the world’s most important Heavy Utility Vehicle manufacturers before WW1. After WW2, the weaving machine production was exported to nearly all countries of the world.

The Heritage A dedicated group of enthusiasts tried to save the heritage of 150 years of technological leadership. Today, the Saurer Museum shows the history and the main technical developments in the three branches heavy duty vehicles, embroidery machines and looms of SAURER, representing the growing importance of the engineering industry in Switzerland from 1860 to 1986. The museum shows: • A representative collection of heavy utility vehicles from the beginning of motorization until 1983, including a carefully conserved truck dating back to 1911 and repatriated from Brazil; fire engines, several military vehicles, a gigantic snow blower, a truck cut in half for demonstration purposes et al;

• Embroidery machines of all generations, all saved from the industrial shredder and brought back to life inside the museum. This includes the first “Chlüpperli-Maschine” of 1860 and a unique “mechanical embroidery computer”.

shows: Without exception, everything is voluntary work. Many of the supporters are veterans of the SAURER factory and used to work on a regular basis with the looms and trucks on display, which gives the museum depth and character hard to find elsewhere.

• Looms of all generations, including the initial spark to the SAURER industrial empire, a loom based on an improved English blue print and equally a high end high speed loom of the 80s.

In summary, the biggest achievement of the new SAURER museum has been to unite a diverse group of almost sixty enthusiasts with a shared passion and incredible dedication, supported by over six hundred sponsors to pursue the common goal of preserving not just beautiful pieces of engineering, but the heritage of generations of the SAURER engineers and the lasting impact they have had on the town of Arbon, Switzerland. With the result that its citizens can once again be proud of the achievements of the SAURER Corporations and its founders.

• All objects are still in use, producing wonderful tea towels sold in our shop. All machines and vehicles are ready for demonstration.

• A complete documentation of all products produced by Saurer.

The museum is 100% based on voluntary work; from the office work, publishing our quarterly magazine, marketing, to technical maintenance and support, museum tours, archive work, demonstrations of all machines, driving the trucks and buses at

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Creation Of The New Cultural Product As A Means To Revive The Intangible Cultural Heritage 112 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

State museum-reserve "Rostov Kremlin" Yeroslavl Region, Russia ICOM Russia Award 2014

Natalia Karovskaya Director ≥ Russia, 152151 Yaroslavl region Rostov the Great Kremlin, Museum ≥ rostmuseum@gmail.com www.rostmuseum.ru ≥ Facebook: rostmuseum Twitter: rostmuseum Instagram: rostmuseum

The State Museum Preserve “Rostov Kremlin” was opened as a museum of ecclesiastical antiquities in the territory of the neglected and decayed Bishop’s House (in the second half of the 17th century) in 1883 on the Memorial Day of Saint Dimitry of Rostov who was considered as a patron saint of the museum. It was one of the first museum projects of a big architectural complex in Russia of the 19th century, which was carried out through the initiative of local communities with the assistance of the Emperor, Moscow's Archaeological Society, and many other companies and individual persons.

The good reputation of this ancient Russian museum made it possible to bring together an impressive collection which takes part not only in Rostov Kremlin exhibitions but also in travelling exhibitions in Russia and abroad.

museum. The second half of the XVII-century Metropolitan garden was restored with the mark sign of the Gregory’s Seclusion building where Epiphanius the Wise, author of Saint Sergius of Radonezh's hagiography, worked at the end of the XIV or at the beginning of the XV century.

Today a large-scale restoration project of the 17th-century Livery Yard is being carried out. This building will be used for exhibitions, restoration studios and fund rooms of the

Since 2010 the director of the museum has been Natalia Karovskaya, a musicologist, a candidate of culturology, a specialist in campanology, and an author of research papers.

More than 400 thousand of people visit the museum every year. Besides lectures and tours, workshops, quest games and toll concerts are carried out there. A “Live Old Times” Folk Festival dedicated to the Days of the Slavic Written Language (May 24), Popular Fluff Festival of Art of Arts Universities Students (July), Rostov Enamel Festival and “Rostov Performance” International Festival of Monastery Culture (22-24 August) are carried out there every year.

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As a teacher of the bell-ringing school of the Yaroslavl Eparchy she trained several dozen bell-ringers who are working now all over the country. She’s also an author of the new toll named Kirillovsky. She’s been a professor of culturology at the Yaroslavl State Teacher Training University named after Ushinsky.

She’s one of the authors of the concept of the “Transfiguration” International Arts festival.

In 2011 N.S. Karovskaya built up a concept and carried out the 1st International Festival of middle-aged culture, which took its name from the texts of saint bishop Dimitry of Rostov – “The Rostov Spectacle”. In the framework of the festival various performances of leading groups played sacred music from different European countries, icon-painting and golden-embroidery workshops were given and a book fair was held.

As envisaged by N.S. Karovskaya, a young composer from Moscow Andrey Doynikov composed the“Rostov suite” for the sympho114 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

ny orchestra, mixing adult and junior vocal ensembles, three female voices and a principal performance dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the State Museum Preserve “Rostov Kremlin”. On the 30th of August 2013 in the framework of the 3rd International Festival of monasterial culture the “Rostov Spectacle” within the walls of the Rostov Kremlin this suite was rendered by the symphony orchestra of the Theatre Novaya Opera (New Opera) (band-master – Dmitry Volosnikov), by the Musician community “Etnosfera” (Ethno-sphere), by the ensemble of ancient Russian sacred music “Sirin” and also by the folk music group “Veretentse”.

The Suite's composition is based on the texts of saint bishop Dimitry of Rostov, who has left a rich literary heritage. Among these works are: the Worshipping Virgin Mary (“Venite Adoremus” – come to adore), the poem “Tara”, a poem of repentance “Death of the damnedest”, and a Christmas poem “I see the Sacrament”.

The music of the suite represents the combination of spiritual and folk traditions, classical symphonic music and modern styles of jazz and fusion. The theme music of leading singers, authentic folk songs and spiritual poems are interlaced in this musical work.

In March 2014 the “Rostov suite” was executed on the stage of the Moscow Theatre “Novaya Opera” (New Opera) in a new way with a modified composition, new parts and leading singers.

In the festival “Inter-museum” in June 2014 the project of N.S. Karovskaya'S “Rostov suite” was conferred a special award by the Russian Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM of Russia). “Promotion across the museum map” for the best project, aimed at developing (promoting) native cultural and environmental heritage as part of the international museum context.

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The Coen Case, Hoorn, The Netherlands EU Prize for cultural heritage / Europa Nostra award 2014

Ad Geerdink Director

An Excellent Model To Discuss Europe’s Complex And Sometimes Painful History And Heritage

≥ Westfries Museum Roode Steen 1 1621 CV Hoorn The Netherlands ≥ museum@wfm.nl wfm.nl ≥ facebook: westfriesmuseum twitter: @WestfriesMuseum

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In general cultural heritage has a good reputation. It is mostly seen as something valuable, to be proud of and worthwhile preserving. But sometimes heritage becomes dissonant. If so, it is often the case with statues of historical figures. These statues were raised in a specific period and for specific reasons.

They send a message; ‘this person sets an example, is someone worthwhile remembering’. Sometimes with a change in historical context, perception and appreciation statues suddenly become a symbol of the contrary; ‘this person represents everything we reject’.

How to react when such a situation emerges?

In 2014 the Westfries Museum in Hoorn, the Netherlands, was granted the Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Award for the museum's response to a public debate concerning the statue of Jan Pietersz Coen (1587-1629), Governor General of the Dutch United East India Company. The statue, a national monument, stands right in front of the museum on the town’s main square.

In 2011 a group of citizens from Hoorn asked the City Council to remove the statue. In their opinion Coen was a mass murderer, who used violence as a means to establish a VOC monopoly in the spice trade in the East Indies.

Their petition for the removal of the statue led to a nation-wide debate. Not only about the monument itself but also about bigger issues; how to deal with the Dutch Colonial Past? What to do with statues that were raised in the nationalistic spirit of the late 19th century? How to judge the acts of figures like Coen, what set of moral standards may or can be used.

The public debate on the street, in the newspapers, on national television and social me-

dia was fierce and emotional and very rather black-and-white. Coen was either a villain or a hero. There was no room for nuance and there was also a great lack of historical knowledge in the debate.

To the Westfries Museum, a municipal museum that profiles itself as a Museum of the Dutch Golden Age, the Coen statue-debate came like ‘a gift from heaven’. Suddenly the Golden Age was trending topic and on everybody’s lips.

The museum responded swiftly with a multimedia project; The Coen Case. A striking example of what a participative museum should be; open to the needs of the local community, involving and creative in the way it raises cultural heritage awareness.

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The starting point was the need of many people to take a side in the debate about the statue, to come up with an opinion about the former Governor General. To respond to that need the museum took the role of motivator and facilitator, without judging itself. It presented historical facts and different opinions on JP Coen in an appealing way, explaining how and why the image of JP Coen had changed over the years. With this information people could make their own mind.

The second aim was to create a permanent information platform concerning JP Coen, that can be used in future debates, by tourists wondering whose statue they are looking at and in general by everybody who wants to know more about this interesting historical figure.

The Coen Case was a multimedia project.

The heart of the project was an exhibition in the form of a trial. An ideal format to present different opinions and to motivate people to get notice of opposite opinions. Like in a trial the museum visitor was confronted with lots of evidence (objects), witnesses of the 118 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

defence and the prosecution (historians and journalists with different opinions).The ‘trial’ was led by the ‘judge’ Maarten van Rossem, a famous Dutch historian and television personality. The museum visitor got the role of a member of the jury and was asked to come up with a motivated verdict on the charge; ‘Jan Pietersz Coen does not deserve a statue’.

This format proved to be a great success.

The museum visitor felt invited to participate and to come up with an opinion. Never was there so much discussion in the museum’s exhibition hall.

In the end the exhibition was temporary. To present all the research in a more permanent but still attractive and appealing way, the exhibition was accompanied by a full colour, 100-page glossy, Coen!. A reference to the many popular personal magazines in the Netherlands. Made in cooperation with a local publisher.

The museum also took the initiative for a website dedicated to Coen. To involve as many people as possible and to keep up the

publicity the museum organised several activities, ranging from side exhibitions, to concerts, lectures and a story-telling project.

The public response to The Coen Case was very good. Over 9.650 visitors participated in the exhibition, of which 3.119 schoolchildren. 1.142 Coen! magazines were sold. But the most rewarding result; 3.012 motivated votes of visitors as members of the exhibition jury whether the statue should be removed or not. The verdict; 67% of the visitors judged that the statue did not have to be removed for different reasons. They argued that one had to judge historical figures by the moral standards of their time, or saw it as a monument of the nationalistic sentiment at the end of the 19th century, or concluded that the removal of the statue would cover up the black pages of history.

new more balanced text in which different views on the Governor General are mentioned. The new information panel on the base of the statue has a QR code that gives access to the Coen website and a telephone number. If people call the number they reach Coen’s voicemail asking them to leave him a message.

The jury of the Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Award appreciated the Westfries Museum approach. They were struck by the wider European significance of the project and called The Coen Case; “a well-executed, multi-layered and creative project, which serves as an excellent model for discussing Europe’s complex and sometimes painful history and heritage in an open and frank debate, without oversimplifying and without taking sides.”

The statue of Governor General Jan Pietersz Coen still overlooks the main square of Hoorn. In the end the City Council decided that they did not want to remove it. But the text of the information panel on the statue was changed. The Westfries Museum wrote a THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 119

A Victorian Vision For The 21st Century

Victoria and Albert Museum London, united kingdom Museums and Heritage Awards for Excellence 2014, Best of the Best

Emmajane Avery Director of Learning and Visitor Experience ≥ Victoria and Albert Museum South Kensington SW7 2RL United kingdom ≥ vanda@vam.ac.uk www.vam.ac.uk ≥ TWITTER: @V_and_A

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The V&A is the UK’s national museum of art, design and performance. Its collections span over 2,000 years of human creativity in virtually every medium and from many parts of the world. It was established in the aftermath of the Great Exhibition of 1851 with an express mission and purpose: to improve the quality of British design. This Great Exhibition of manufacturing from around the world, along with the findings of a government select committee, had combined to illustrate that British design was not what it ought to be. It was recommended that a collection, where people could see examples of design, and a design school, where pupils could be educated in the principles of good design, should be founded and hence a forerunner of the V&A was established. Land was later purchased from the proceeds of the Great Exhibition and the V&A was built on its current site in South Kensington. Not only did this new institution showcase good design through its collections and architecture, but it had visitor experience and learning at its heart from the outset. It opened in the evenings so working people could visit and at the heart of its grandest building was a café and a lecture theatre: a place where body and soul could be fed in an ornate temple of knowledge.

Today this mission continues. We aspire to be recognised as the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance, and to enrich people’s lives by promoting research, knowledge and enjoyment of the designed world to the widest possible audience. This has scholarship, learning and visitor experience at its centre. We were delighted to be awarded with the ‘Best of the Best’ at the Museums and Heritage Awards in 2014 in recognition of the V&A’s transformation over the past few years, its innovative exhibition programme and its focus on bringing our mission to an increasingly wide audience. In this short article I will attempt to explain how

this has been done, while ensuring that we support the original vision of 150 years ago.

One of the features of the last few years at the V&A has been the ever more ambitious exhibition programme. Currently we are showing ‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’ and last year ‘David Bowie is…’ for which another Museums and Heritage Award 2014 for ‘Temporary or Touring Exhibition’ was won. These exhibitions showcase the most astute scholarship in an inventive and immersive environment. They are both exhibitions and choreographic experience. They are intended to both inform and delight, to bring together the most iconic, renowned and well-crafted objects within an environment that embodies the spirit of the maker or ‘subject’ through sight, sound and experience. In ‘David Bowie is’ for example, visitors experienced hand-written lyrics, set designs, album artwork and stage costumes accompanied by an evocative Bowie ‘soundtrack’ delivered through headphones triggered by sensors as visitors approached the appropriate object. Having progressed through each era of Bowie’s creativity, people emerged into a ‘concert’ where costumes, music and projections the height of a large house created an extraordinary finale. While we strive for excellent scholarship and staging, we also have been spending just as much time on the less visible side of operations and organisation. No matter how good the show is, if people cannot get a ticket, if they are put in the wrong queue, if the queues are confusing or too long and if the exhibition is hot and overcrowded, all of this hard work can come to nought and visitors can leave with a bad impression. Hence why a huge amount of care and time has been put into the less glamorous aspects of managing queues, predicting ‘dwell times’, proposing comfortable yet sustainable limits for ticket sales and identifying ‘pinch points’ in the exhibition where we need to plan for large numbers of THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 121

people to dwell for significant amounts of time. With innovation and popularity comes risk, but ‘David Bowie is’ was seen by over 310,000 people at the V&A and at the time of writing nearly 1 million people worldwide have visited as part of its international tour.

From ‘David Bowie is’ we have learnt valuable lessons for McQueen, which we are actively applying now.

In 2017 these exhibitions will move to a new, underground, purpose-built exhibition space, topped by a new entrance and courtyard, with a brand new volunteer and digital welcome at our Exhibition Road Building.

Over the past 15 years the V&A has been gradually reinventing itself through a project called FuturePlan and over 70% of its public spaces have been renewed. Extensive public consultation has taken place to ensure that target audiences are at the heart of these developments, which reveal the quality of the original buildings, provide beautiful environments for the collections, interpretation developed with audiences and to make the museum physically and intellectually accessible to everyone. FuturePlan has seen the 122 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

renovation of over two thirds of the museum’s 140 galleries, some 50 capital projects have been completed in a period of 15 years and over £170m has been raised. As for the new Building, not only will this create new spaces, but a new entrance will naturally re-orientate the V&A estate in what is arguably the most significant development since the Museum’s opening 150 years ago. The challenge will be to open and deliver the new spaces, but also to plan what it means for the rest of the building and for our visitors’ experience of it.

Another way in which we have been focusing on the visitor experience is through the Learning Programme, which now caters for 200,000 learners per year, up from 150,000 three years ago. At the essence of this programme is a desire to illuminate design practice, to engage real designers in delivering our activities and to be a conduit between the collections, the public and the world of creative design. An example of this is ‘Making It’, an annual careers day for young people aged 16 to 24 who take part in workshops, talks and ‘surgeries’ with practicing designers, to

get portfolio and careers advice and practical tips on how to set up their own business. This event is attended by around 2,400 young people and is partly curated by CreateVoice, our young people’s collective, who host events on the day and advise us on the inspiration they need so that the event has a real pertinence and relevance to their lives.

founders to an ever broader audience both in the UK and overseas.

The above projects very much express the essence of what we have always been about: inspiring the makers and consumers of design. But they also express a determination to constantly improve the visitor experience.

As one of the first museums to open in the evenings 150 years ago, we are mindful of keeping to this legacy. We are also seeking to export this notion to sites beyond South Kensington. In the next few years we will open a V&A Museum of Design in Dundee, a brand new museum in the Olympic Park, and a V&A Gallery at the Shekou Design Museum, China. It feels like an exciting time to be part of the V&A as we look to expand our international reach, reputation and impact and to take the original mission of the museum’s

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presenters

Presenters

.... In order of appearance in the programme

Baksi Museum, Bayburt, Turkey

Currently the Museum Director since 2015, Feride Çelik worked previoulsy as Contemporary Art Curator in Deyim Gallery and Office Director in 2002 Health Services and Medical Equipment Company. Feride is a graduate of Art Management Program at University of Yeditepe and has degrees in Fine Arts, Undergraduate Program of Old Dominion, Business English Certificate Program at University of Boston and of Business Management in Undergraduate Program of University of Marmara. She is currently preparing a thesis for her PhD in Art Theory at University of Isık.

From a Rusty City to a New Miskolc, Miskolc, Hungary

Edina Mató is one of the founding member of the association, sociologist, teacher. From 2007 Edina has lead and co-managed several projects of the Association. These projects have included several activities like oral history research, volunteer coordination, spreading cultural heritage awareness among youngsters, environment preserving community actions etc. At the moment she is a co-manager of the project Átjáró-Tanoda. There the after school activities are provided for underprivileged children.

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, Norman, United States

Museum director and scientist, Michael A. Mares has a rodent, a bat, and a parasite named after him. He directs and helped build the Sam Noble Museum. Mares received a biology degree at the University of New Mexico, an MS from Fort Hays Kansas State University, and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Mares has published 12 books and more than 200 scientific papers. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, former president of the Natural Science Collections Alliance, and former president of the American Society of Mammalogists.

Natural History Museum Rijeka, Rijeka , Croatia

Željka Modrić Surina graduated, mastered and received a PhD in Biology, Ecology from the University of Zagreb. Her main research interests are flora, vegetation, ecology and hydrology of mires and other fresh water habitats. She has been working at the Natural History Museum Rijeka since 2003 as a curator/senior curator in charge of botanical collections as well as a museum educator. In 2013 she was appointed as a director of the Museum.

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presenters MUSE - Museo delle Scienze, Trento, Italy

Since 1992 Director of MuseoTridentino di Scienze Naturali, Dr. Michele has a PhD. degree in Paleoanthropology. Dr. Lanzinger published a number of scientific papers and reviews on early population of the Alps in Late Pleistocene Era. More recently he published articles on science museology. He served for two mandates as President of the Italian Association of Scientific Museums and for two mandates as member of the Board of the ICOM Italy. He teaches science communication at the Faculty of Science of Trento University.

Lanzinger

Ningbo Museum, Ningbo, China

got her Bachelor’s degree in Russian from PLA University of Foreign Language in 1999. She began work as a professional Russian-Chinese interpreter for PLA, and joined the Chinese Communist Party in January 2001. She later worked as administrative officer for PLA. Having finished her military duty in 2007, Ms. Qi came to work as HR specialist for Ningbo Bureau of Culture Radio & TV, Press and Publication, and later became Chief of HR department.In December 2014 she became acting director of Ningbo Museum.

Qi Yingchun

Horta Museum, Bruxelles, Belgium

graduated as an architect from St-Lukas Architectuurinstituut in Brussels in 1981 and obtained in 1988 a Master Degree at the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (KU Leuven), where she is today program director and teaching conservation practice. Besides she is head of ‘Barbara Van der Wee Architects’, her private studio for architecture and conservation in Brussels, specialized in the conservation of 19th and 20th century heritage, with an exceptional expertise in the restoration and rehabilitation of Art Nouveau buildings.

Barbara Van der Wee

Ilon’s Wonderland “I am always here. Ilon”, Haapsalu, Estonia

has a bachelor's degree in pedagogy from University of Tartu. Since 2009 she has been working in Ilon's wonderland, Ilon Wikland's gallery and theme centre as manager. Liina enjoys being surrounded by magical art of Ilon Wikland and to be reminded of her wonderful childhood and love for reading. She does her best to share these affections with the visitors of the gallery.

Liina Valdmann

presenters

Teatro Sociale, Bergamo, Italy

has a degree in Civil Engineer and a master degree in Restoration of Monuments. He is Cultural Heritage Restorer, ARB registered Architect, certified as Specialist Conservation Architect at Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He has been Coordinator and designer for the restoration of more than 200 monuments of local, regional and national relevance in Italy and abroad. He is consultant for the Turkish Rectorate General of Foundations (VGM), for Italian Trade Agency and for Assorestauro which is responsible for the organization and coordination of the Italian-Russian education exchange, and for CEI (Vatican).

Nicola Berlucchi

Les Musées de la civilisation, Québec, Canada

Hélene Bernier holds a B.A. in communication. She first joined the Musée de la civilisation team in 1990 as a project manager, and became director of the Department of international exhibitions in 1994. In 2002, Ms. Bernier temporarily left the Musuem to join the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), where she has been the director of two different departments. In January 2011 she returned to the Musée de la civilisation as Director of exhibitions and international affairs.

Little Museum of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

A Writer, playwright, food critic, magazine publisher, museum director and social entrepreneur, Trevor White has written about food for fifteen years and published many guidebooks and written several books. He has a diploma in Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin. He was Deputy Editor of Food & Wine Magazine 1996-98,Editor of America’s Elite 1000 1998-2000, Publisher of The Dubliner Magazine 2000-2008 and currently is Director of City of a Thousand Welcomes and Little Museum of Dublin. His interests include theatre, media, politics, history, sport and crosswords.

National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark

Marianne Grymer Bargeman is Head of the Children & Youth Department at the SMK and author of children's books. She holds a MA degree in Art History from the University of Copenhagen and Universiteit van Amsterdam, and also holds a BA in Comparative Literature and a management degree. Nana Bernhardt is Head of School programmes at the SMK and Skoletjenesten/Education Centre. She co-wrote the book Dialogue-based Teaching.

The Art Museum as a Learning Space (2012) with Olga Dysthe and Line Esbjorn. She holds a MA degree in Art History from the University of Copenhagen and the Université Paris-Sorbonne.

is a conservation specialist and member of the Commission of Artistic Components within the Ministry of Culture, Romania. Carmen, was awarded, in 2008 by the National University of Arts, Bucharest, the title of Doctor of Arts with the paper Restoration of mural paintings in medieval churches in Moldavia. With an experience of over 20 years within the George Enescu University of Arts, Iasi, she holds the title of Conf.

Univ. and is the head of the Mural Art, Restoration and Art History department. Her conservation portfolio includes Romania's north-east most important medieval monuments and UNESCO international project Restoration of Probota Monastery Romania.

Carmen Cecilia Solomonea

Miraikan, Tokyo, Japan

Maholo Uchida started her career as a new media art curator and curated several national and international exhibitions. Since her appointment to Miraikan in 2002, she has developed a new style of science exhibitions, where activities and exhibitions strongly orientated towards art, design, game, manga and other popular culture. She received MA in Media Governance from Keio University (Tokyo), MAS of Scenography from Zurich University of the Arts, received a grant from Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs and experienced one year professional internship at MoMA (New York) in Department of Media.

Museum of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden Karl Arvidsson studied

to be an archaeologist, but ended up studying and working with audiences in various ways. Since 2000 he´s been working in different culture departments and museums in West Sweden. In September 2013 he became the head of the Department of Learning, Programmes and Visitor Services at The Museum of Gothenburg. Previous to this commitment he was the project manager and producer of the exhibition The Children’s Museum at the same museum. He is a keen believer of lifelong learning, the ability of the audience and the importance of cooperation inside and outside the museums walls.

Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, Nagoya, Japan Toru Hirono joined

Toyota Auto Body Co., Ltd. In 1983 and worked mainly on passenger vehicle upper body design within the Body Design Division.

In 1993 he was assigned to the Construction Preparation Office for the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, where he prepared exhibits before opening. He continued to be in charge of exhibit planning and special events at the museum after opening. He is the only office member to have been involved since before the opening and in subsequent revamps for the museum’s 10th, 15th and 20th anniversaries.

presenters

Dragomirna Church's 17th Century Frescoes, Suceava, Romania

presenters

Žanis Lipke Memorial, Riga, Latvia

Currently the director, Lolita Tomsone has studied Jewish culture and language in Jerusalem. She is involved in the scientific research conducted by the museum by collecting testimonies of the Holocaust survivors and the witnesses of the war. She also actively participates in international conferences dedicated to social memory and Holocaust. Besides the work in Žanis Lipke memorial, Lolita Tomsone is a freelance writer and translates articles, books and films.

Historical Route of the Lines of Torres Vedras, Lisbon, Portugal

is in charge of the cultural and social affairs at the municipality of Torres Vedras. She is a Psychology graduate and has a Master degree in Educational Sciences. She worked in several Adult Learning and community development projects anchored in the Agency for Regional Development. In addition, Ana has experience as a trainer and teacher having collaborated with several governmental organisations such as National Agency for Further Education and Training and Board of Vocational Training of the Ministry of Education and also with higher education institutions.

Ana Umbelino

Textile Centre Haslach and the Museum of Weaving, Haslach, Austria

finished her studies of Textiles and Psychology/Philosophy at Salzburg and Linz in 2002. From 2004 to 2012 she was Senior lecturer at the Universities in Linz and Salzburg and went through museology-education at the Museumsakademie Joanneum Graz. Since 2006 she developed the concept of the Textile Centre and Museum in Haslach. Andreas Selzer graduated from Textile School Spengergasse in Vienna and worked in sales and production in several Dutch and Austrian companies. Since 2012 involved in weaving, exhibitions and economics in the Textile Centre Haslach and the Museum of Weaving.

Christina Leitner

Museum of Innocence, Istanbul, Turkey

Onur Karaoglu is a theater director, art manager, teacher and writer. He graduated from Bogaziçi University with a BA in Sociology. Holds an MFA in Theater Directing from Columbia University in the City of New York. He worked with Anne Bogart, SITI Company and Martha Graham Dance Company. He collaborated with Orhan Pamuk in the making of Innocence Of Objects, which won the The Mary Lynn Kotz Award. He currently works as the director of The Museum Of Innocence in Istanbul. He has been teaching at Bogaziçi Univeristy since 2013.

With master's degree in International relations at Azad University in Tehran, and PhD in Political Science at University of Vienna Dr Nasser Keikheaei has been engaged at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic republic of Iran since 1982, with most of his duties related to the cultural, managemental, economic and political issues. He is currently Counsellor and deputy head of mission at Iranian Embassy in Vienna, responsible for Coordination of Political Affairs and promotion of economic relation with Austria, and Adviser to the Permanent Representative to UNO-CTBTO.

National Archives, The Hague, The Netherlands

After her studies in museology Nancy Hovingh worked on the historical exhibitions for Antwerp, European Capital of Culture in 1993, organised projects as a freelance curator in various institutions. She has been associated with the National Archives of the Netherlands as exhibitions curator and project leader since 2007. In addition to organising exhibitions, she is responsible for the concept and implementation of the renovation and new arrangement of the public spaces. She developed the concept of the inaugural exhibition The Memory Palace, the digital visitor support and directed the implementation of the entire project.

Nanjing Museum, Nanjing, China Wang Qizhi leads

the conservation, collection, art history research and archeology departments in the museum, as well as the Museum Store Association. In the past few years, he has overseen the building expansion and renovation of the museum, made great contributions to the permanent exhibitions and social programs, and participated in planning of many special exhibitions. He received his B.A. in archeology from Shandong University and studied as a visiting scholar in University College London. He organized many archeological excavation programs, two of which were awarded National Prize for Top Ten New Discoveries. He has published widely on archaeology and museology.

Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, United States

Christian G. Carron has served as Director of Collections for The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis since 2012. His staff oversees a collection of more than 120,000 artifacts and specimens that range from dinosaur fossils to Hollywood superhero capes. His previous employers include the Grand Rapids Public Museum, The Kentucky Museum, and Louisiana State Museum in the U.S. Carron is a published author on American decorative arts, an accreditation reviewer for the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), and in 2010 received AAM’s prestigious Brooking Prize for Creativity in Museums.

presenters

Restoration of the Saryazd Citadel, Yazd, Islamic Republic of Iran

presenters

Saurer Museum, Arbon, Switzerland

Dr. Rudolf Baer, president of the SAURER Museum Arbon is a senior strategy consultant in IT security. As a second, third and fourth job he runs the Oldtimer Club SAURER, the association of the friends of the museum and the museum itself. He runs the show, motivates the troops, is the chief PR officer, oversees the helpdesk and acts as the editor-in-chief of the “OCS Gazette�, a quarterly review for this very special museum in Arbon, Switzerland.

State museum-reserve "Rostov Kremlin", Yaroslavl Region, Russia

The director of the museum since 2010, Natalia Karovskaya has a PhD in cultural science, is associate professor of the Yaroslavl pedagogical university and member of the Russian union of composers. Since 1989 till 2001 she worked in the Yaroslavl historical, architectural and art museum-reserve as a head of the sector of choral and bell ringing art. Author of different exhibitions, organizer of science conferences, devoted to the theme of bell ringing, she is the laureate of the first prize of the Governor of the Yaroslavl region. westfries museum, Hoorn, The Netherlands

Dr Ad Geerdink studied History at the University of Groningen. Since 1990 he has been working in several Dutch museums. In 2007 he became director of the Westfries Museum in Hoorn. Since 2013 he is chairman of the Historical Section of the Dutch Museum Association. His passion is to find new and creative means to make cultural heritage relevant to a contemporary public.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom

holds MA in Museology at the University of East Anglia and started her career at the Ashmolean Museum. She went on to become Curator: School and Teacher Programmes at Tate Modern and was then Head of Education at the Wallace Collection. She joined the V&A in 2011 as Head of the Department of Learning, overseeing learning activities for schools, families, young people, students and adults. In 2014 Emmajane became Director of Learning and Visitor Experience.

Emmajane Avery

In order of appearance in the programme

Carl Depauw, Belgium

Carl Depauw is General Manager of Art Museums Antwerp. In the 1980's he was responsible for various exhibitions on 16th and 17th century prints and drawings at Museum Plantin-Moretus and the Stedelijk Prentenkabinet, and published numerous articles, catalogues and books in this field. 1998-99 he worked as exhibitions curator and exhibition secretary at Antwerpen Open. Since 2000 Carl became Director at the Rubens House, where he produced several exhibitions. From 2004 -2015 he was director of the Museum aan de Stroom (MAS). The museum received several awards and nominations in the field of architecture, design, museology and innovative communication and marketing. Carl takes part as member in several international institutions and organisations occupied in the fields of research in Art History and Museology, and acts often as advisor. Hispresentation of the MAS at The Best in Heritage 2014 was voted as the best by the conference audience in Dubrovnik.

Dr Anne-Catherine Robert-Hauglustaine, France

With a Ph.D. in History of Science and Technology, Prof. Dr Robert-Hauglustaine worked for nearly ten years at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and subsequently as Deputy Director of the Jardin des Sciences at the University of Strasbourg, France. She was Vice-President of the European Science Events Association (Eusea) from 2012 to 2014. Her longtime dedication to ICOM and the international museum community goes back more than 15 years. She was elected Treasurer of ICOM at ICOM’s 23rd General Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in August 2013, and subsequently appointed Director General of ICOM on 1 May, 2014. As ICOM’s Director General, she has overseen the drafting of a UNESCO-ICOM recommendation on the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections.

John Sell, United Kingdom

John Sell is the Executive Vice-President of Europa Nostra and the chairman of The Best in Heritage Advisory Board. Member of RIBA from 1973, he holds Accredited Architect Graduate diploma in Building conservation. John Sell worked on many projects across Europe as consultant, architect and advisor, contributed to and started many heritage and conservation projects. He holds several voluntary and advisory positions in UK and abroad, such as Chairman of Society for the protection of Ancient Buildings, assessor of conservation grants to the Getty programme etc. He wrote several publications and lectured extensively throughout Europe.

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moderators

Keynote Speaker And Moderators

moderators

goranka horjan, croatia

Goranka Horjan is currently CEO of the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb.

Since 2012 she is the Chair of the European Museum Forum, which runs the European Museum of the Year Award programme. She is active in ICOM and has been a member of the Executive Council since 2010 and has also served two terms as the Chair of the International Committee for Regional Museums. For two years she was the Assistant Minister of Culture of the Republic of Croatia. For 12 year she was the general director of the Museums of Hrvatsko zagorje and formed the new Museum of Krapina Neanderthals.

Dr Wim de Vos, Belgium

Born in Mechelen, Wim de Vos has a PhD in Literature, Specialisation in Semiotics. Formerly he was in charge of the outreach activities of the Royal Library of Belgium and communication Manager of the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels. He was Advisor to the Belgian Minister in Charge of the Federal Museums 2009-2011 and currently serves as Advisor to the Belgian Minister of Agriculture for Middle Classes and Social Integration.

Wim is a member of the Executive Council of ICOM and of the Judging Panel of the European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA), of which he was the chair 2012-2015.

Amongst other activities, in his free time he enjoys cycling and polyphonic singing.

Professor Tomislav Sladojević Šola

He finished Art History in Zagreb, Museology in Paris and Zagreb, and made his PhD in Ljubljana. Starting the career as a museum curator he then became director of Museum documentation centre in Zagreb. He became Chairman of the National Committee and later on a member of Executive council of ICOM. Professor occupied the position of Head of Department of Information Sciences, held the Chair of Museology at the University of Zagreb and was regularly teaching at seven universities abroad. He was a member of jury of EMYA and head of a Jury at Europa Nostra and is actual Council member.

Professor Šola lectured about 330 hours internationally and wrote eight books, chapters in nine books and about 250 articles. He is a founder and director of "The Best in Heritage" conference.

Financing Heritage Institutions In Times of Scarcity

Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik, September 27th 2015 In Partnership With The Embassy Of The Kingdom Of The Netherlands In Croatia In Cooperation With ICOM Croatia And Croatian Museum Association

Dutch museums have a good reputation for having dealt with strategic and financial matters very successfully - various examples of activities in self-financing and self-generated revenue are known to the international professional community outside of the Netherlands, through literature and participation of Dutch projects at our own, and conferences alike. The experience of Delta-Plan and de-etatisation of museums is relatively familiar to well informed colleagues worldwide.

Culture and museums are in difficulties in all transitional countries. New requirements for effectiveness and severe cuts in state subsidies are a difficult context. The aim of this seminar is to offer insight into examples of successful management of museums in The Netherlands, with the intention to offer this experience to all regional or even wider professional circles. We hope to offer useful

knowledge and create inspiring atmosphere that should result in upgrading the heritage institutions' practices in the times of shrinking budgets and growing demand. The changes will imply the increase in quality of the products and new methods and partnerships concerning financial management.

Recent fervent discussions in Croatia on legislation of museum service that suggests changes in the public nature of institutions raised many concerns. Many find these tendencies and novelties puzzling and disorientating. The Best in Heritage is for 14th time the global showcase of professional excellence in public qualities of museums and other heritage institutions. The conference, global in character, will offer a good introduction and context for such a hot issue that will remain such for quite a while, - posing challenges and inspiring solutions.

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conference exhibition

As a part of the programme in Dubrovnik, the conference exhibition is organised and displayed in Dubrovnik Museums throughout September. It features posters of the 28 projects that are being presented at the conference this year. The venue is the Rector's Palace, highly frequent and visited location, with approximately 22.000 international visitors expected during September of 2015. Thus we share the conference contents with the motivated visitors of Dubrovnik.

The informational texts are bilingual: in this case English and Croatian. All posters have QR codes leading to the web-page with articles and images of featured laureates.

Those pages are equipped with website, contact and social media hyper-links.

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european heritage association Š

THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 135

Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921. photo: ferdinand schmutzer.

E = excellence m= museums, memory c = communication

In paraphrasing the famous formula that changed the world, we will use it here to create a different interpretation that will provoke a change in the domain of (public) memory, museums, monuments. Only through the insistence of communicating the values we stand for, can we create momentum in the heritage movement.

the excellence club

The Excellence Club

Thus The Best in Heritage Excellence Club will further grow to become an indispensable search engine for all those who wish to explore the changing ideas of what constitutes excellence in museums, heritage and conservation in practice.

...being present at MPT-Expo 2016, Chengdu, China Listed below are museums, heritage and conservation projects which have been presented in Dubrovnik in the past thirteen years, joined by the new members - the projects yet to be presented this September.

To be invited to the presentation in Dubrovnik they must have received a reward for outstanding quality of their achievements in the previous year. Our is the rightful claim that they are supposed to be the cutting edge of what the heritage profession(s) can offer.

The idea is to let them share their success story with an eager international audience.

We give them the opportunity to spread their fame and gain further well deserved recognition for their achievements.

The accumulation of such positive, constructive efforts, so evidently recognized by their fellow professionals and the wider public, has achieved such a coherence that it deserved a name. Therefore, we named this collection The Excellence Club. It is an informal, but real club. Since 2005 Exponatec fair has been our precious partner in this endeavour and a splendid international showcase form our most prestigious projects.

The collection is a remarkable one: some 250 projects strong. All we want is to make it more evident, accessible and used: by heritage professionals or those who are being educated for heritage professions.

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In 2014 The Best in Heritage was offered a stand and conference contribution at the International Exposition of Museum and Relevant Products and Technologies (MPT-Expo2014, Xiamen), a biennial fair started in 2004 for museums and suppliers in China.

This event is organized by the Chinese Museums Association (CMA) in cooperation with various partners in China and internationally. In appreciation of the successful start and recognizing the contributions that Best in Heritage has made to the international museum and heritage fields, CMA offered the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding that would assure regular cooperation. We have readily consented. Signed this June in Dubrovnik, this document provides yet another international opportunity to spread the fame of our Excellence Club members. It helps us to affirm our global reach by forging a better visibility of our conference in Asia.

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Congratulations to the new members, projects presented at The Best in Heritage 2015 conference!

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Comprehensive list of all the Excellence Club members with project information, video presentations and enclosed links to their web domains and social media is available at: http://presentations. thebestinheritage.com

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EXPONATEC cologne

All Roads Lead To EXPONATEC COLOGNE

A winning concept, a depth of content and precise orientation to the target group identify EXPONATEC COLOGNE as Europe’s leading communications platform for the museum, preservation and restoration sectors. With 186 exhibitors from 15 countries and over 4,000 international trade visitors, EXPONATEC COLOGNE, which took place in November 2013, was clearly a big success.

Institutions and companies from the diverse industries and service sectors of the cultural market presented the trade public with new products, solutions and concepts related to the themes exhibition, restoration and cultural heritage. An ambitious conference programme including lectures and discussion forums underlined the importance of EXPONATEC COLOGNE as the central platform for dialogue and discussion.

activities to Cologne in 2015. The successful co-operations with Best in Heritage, the Deutscher Museumsbund (German Museums Association), and Europa Nostra will continue in the coming year. The Best in Heritage Excellence Club” will stop in Cologne in 2015 for the sixth time already and present the best exhibition projects of the years 2014 and 2015. The special platform and audience magnet EXPOCASE, with its creative show which uses a three-dimensional format to visualize display designs of the future, will also be returning. EXPOCASE is particularly popular with designer studios, exhibition organizers and students. Lectures and discussion forums will accompany the EXPOCASE presentations.

The clear profile of EXPONATEC COLOGNE will again attract international market participants and representatives of cultural

EXPONATEC COLOGNE

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parallel to Cologne Fine Art 2015 www.exponatec.com

The Best in Heritage / Excellence Club Programme Day I, 18 November

>> 10.00 - 13.00 OPENING CEREMONY Gathering of the partners, presenters, organizers and the members of the press >> 10.30 - 11.00 INTRODUCTORY SPEECHES: Mrs. Katharina C. Hamma, Chief Operating Officer - Koelnmesse GmbH; Representative of the City of Cologne; Dr. Anne-Catherine Robert-Hauglustaine, Director General – ICOM; Dr. Michael Henker, President - ICOM Germany; Prof. Dr. Eckart Köhne, President Deutscher Museumsbund >> 11.00 - 11.10 Professor Tomislav Šola: On 14 years of The Best in Heritage and Excellence Club >> 11.10 - 11.20 Europa Nostra / EU Award schemes presentation >> 11.20 - 11.40 Museum aan de Stroom, Antwerp, Belgium, European Museum Forum’s Silletto Award 2013 laureate, voted as the Best formal presentation at The Best in Heritage 2014 >> 11.40 - 11.45 Moderated Q&A session with Ms Marieke Van Bommel, Director, Museum aan de Stroom >> 11.45 - 12.05 Most Influential project, as voted by the audience in Dubrovnik in September 2015.. TBA >> 12.05 - 12.10 Moderated Q&A session with presenter of the project >> 12.10 - 12.30 William Morris Gallery.

Walthamstow, United Kingdom, Art Fund Prize as Museum of the Year 2013 laureate

>> 12.30 - 12.35 Moderated Q&A session with Ms Carien Kremer, Curator, William Morris Gallery >> 12.35 - 12.55 National Archive of the Netherlands: The Memory Palace, Micheletti Award winner 2015 >> 12.55 - 13.00 Moderated Q&A session with Ms Nancy Hovingh, Exhibitions curator and Project leader, National Archive >> 13.00 - 13.30 "Museums and Cultural Landscapes", Dr Anne-Catherine RobertHauglustaine, Director General, ICOM >> 13.30 - 14.00 Welcome drink Days II & III, 19 - 20 November

Visit the stands of four presented projects, members of our Excellence Club. You are invited to get in direct contact with their representatives and acquire more information about their extraordinary work. Your visit may turn into "Meet the expert" session, in which you can get free advice or consult these experts upon the range of professional questions, especially on use of technology or simply to establish business contacts.

See what “The Best in Heritage” is about, as we transform our stage into interactive exhibition in which visitors can read about and watch Videos of more than 200 presentations of award-winning museum, heritage and conservation projects from past thirteen editions of Dubrovnik conferences. We bring this impressive collection of examples of professional excellence to you in one place.

Get to know us in person, feel free to join us for a conversation as after the first day of presentations we turn the auditorium into a comfortable place for socialising.

See you in Hall 3.2, Ailse A, No. 090 in Cologne!

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best in heritage at EXPONATEC

Exponatec Cologne 18 - 20 November 2015

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Public Memory Institutions And Their Idealist Objective A Contribution Professor Tomislav Šola 1. Mission

The mission of public memory institutions (PMIs) should be defined as a beneficial contribution to the societal project. All characterized by the “three C” (collecting, care, communication) they reveal the amazing underlying similarity. Their future will be formed around this simple claim. Conventional heritage institutions confine the physical substance of heritage within their walls into storage, shelves and glass cases. Within this conservative paradigm and at a “secure” distance from life, heritage withers away or falls prey to advancing commoditisation in some form of privatisation or heritage industry. The new ones, (their occupational independence retained) are the chance for new efficiency in matters of public memory (formed all along the flashing configuration of collective and social memory). Museums, archives and libraries are the core of the public memory sector that will mature into a new profession with its proper upper conceptual ground, - its own science, and finally, recognition of its decisive role in strategy of development. A good, well selected, noble memory is unavoidable condition for any societal project.

This science, as cybernetics of heritage, changes the attitude creating a defence system of identity through understanding, evaluation and supportive action enabling continuity of quality detected in past experiences.

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The same cybernetic impulses are applied as counter-active in all the situations of threat.

An expert in the science of public memory, should be able to offer a vision of what would be a usable, pragmatic and symbolic use of heritage. The departing assessment would probably be that neither museums nor other heritage institutions are collection but mission based, not object but user centred.

The failure to deliver or fulfil such a vision has been the reason for the certain limping of the entire public sector. Civil society intervened by providing what official domain failed to offer. The space has been also cleared for the private initiative. Collectors were the great source of public museums but nowadays prefer to take up the initiative and offer directly their own, often selfish and biased contribution. The impoverishing state is leaving its responsibilities to citizens also due to the irresponsible passivity of the public institutions and its “professionals” (who do not meet true public expectations). All professions are here to make the world a better place. The real professions are as a collective body “the grown-ups” of society, able to take responsibility and manage a sustainable, long-term policy that transcends particular and temporary interests, especially of the governing groups but also, paradoxically, of (manipulated) citizens. Theirs is the proverbial role of the elders. This traditional notion of knowledge was always meant to be a sort of privilege of prudence provided by a

Only modern society has had a chance to control these processes of generative, quality memory for the common benefit. Alas, the obstacles are rising and multiplying due to a certain global medievalisation of societies.

The violent elites, false by any standard, are plundering not only the wealth of the subdued classes, but also the human chances for survival, - be it in the sense of endangered civic values or the literal survival due to the devastation of the natural environment. It is from this profound social need the PMIs were given the mandate for their function. Though entrusted with such a power, they have never emancipated themselves from their relevant science and its telescoping specialist aspirations. So, gradually the method took the form of the purpose. With the help of societal manipulation (say, by political subordination) and their own opportunism, the PMIs degraded into scribes of power holders instead of establishing themselves as preceptors, instructors, teachers, or tutors.

We necessarily generalize as the excellence in performance and reflection was rare and limited to developed countries and big, prosperous cities. Since the beginning of the 80s the world has become an unsafe and risky place. The mission of heritage, especially in its function of public memory cannot depend upon politicians and corporative sector, nor can it be entrusted to civil society or to some self-regulation. The very vision, the dream of democratic, free society in its sustainable relation to nature is at stake. Corporations misuse media with the assistance of politicians and campaign rallies to work against a value system that is acceptable to the entire

society.

The age of lonely and desperate egoists has been conjured and advocated for some eighty years1 as a desirable selfish social code. It now so successfully conquers the planet that the consequence is not only the individual separation, but selfishness that has secluded and isolated individuals to such an extent as to threaten the natural social impulse for collective living. This cult of wild, unleashed egotism has found many ways to express its insatiability. But the principles are pushed outside the domain of economy and finance. Private museums are an intervention into the modern society much the same way as private educational institutions and private health institutions are. There is no harm in their complementing role or in a humble contribution to the society, but any tendency of replacing the public domain in its key positions in managing society’s interests is delicate if not openly dangerous. Any advanced community will build its own freedom upon the freedom of minority cultures, sub-cultures and individuals, balancing the harmonious diversity. Equally, the excessive role of politicians and religious authorities in managing culture must be returned to profession(s). Cultural industries and art, when best, can help the process. But public memory institutions (PMIs), non-for-profit by definition, should demonstrate their power in giving back to life what they have extracted from it, as injections for the reinforcement of the immune system of their community or society. Acting where the need exists, being part of life is the shortest lesson of philosophy of heritage. Culture that wants to be effective, like heritage, - has to be practised, 1 Ayn Rand and Edward Louis Bernays are seemingly the symbolic and the functional beginning of that long succession of promoters of dehumanisation of society, - finally triumphant. Their caricatures as Donald Trump are only the evidence of the overall degradation of values that has permeated the West.

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long, compressed experience. Naturally, the social function of such ultimate importance was always usurped by the religious and secular potentates, therefore rarely realized in its full positive capacity as it was compromised by their particular interests.

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- lived. Heritage stored in museums is heritage stored in museums, not heritage. PMIS should speak by the language of life and in the favour of it. Heritage, in all its rich complexity, has to be turned into public memory as wisdom to be prescribed to the world in crisis. Of course, nothing of these proposals is new nor will it be endangering present structures: the plausible changes happen by addition and by detecting hidden potentials.

Mnemosophy cannot be but a science in constant change as its domain is the praxis of public memory institutions. As it serves society, it constantly adjusts to the changing world. The profession of heritage must derive from its own philosophy its ways of reasoning, its inspiration and the arguments for vocational dedication, - to be able to conceive and maintain their mission.

Having the mission or not, maybe the divide between an occupation and a profession. An occupation has tasks to solve and needs to fulfil, all concerning the performances of their institutions, but having a mission is a step further. The term implies engagement for the common good, and this attractive claim soon caught the imagination of the commercial world. Any company now procures a mission statement at the very start of any public communication but, though at its best it may be revealing good intentions, or a useful product, - that is still far from serving the welfare. The heritage industry is culture based but still one of the profit driven industries. Any honest endeavour in any profit making industry can claim that the happy customer is its final goal and there can hardly be anything disputable in it. But the mission of any profession is about its specific contribution to the common good of society in its entirety. Having such a mission is the condition for existence of professions. Probably any human being is, at least potentially, born with the mission, - with a possibility to 146 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

transcend the limits of mere biology and social pragmatism, but institutions have to be made as such. Sadly, many public employees do little to surpass the narrow scope of their selfish interests or the mere skills of their trade. If public institutions or entire sectors fail to do what is their encoded duty, - that is inexcusable.

2. Productive and counter-active nature: sustainability

Any ethical striving seems to be inherent in human kind so sustainability as a vision of a balanced, harmonious world is not an invention of modern man, nor are its abuses. The lessons to be learned are the embedded in the giant memory of mankind, and much of it, though less than claimed, is stored and (still drastically less) exposed.

Conventional museums are inept at coping with the challenges of the world, the needs of their users and the demand for developmental relevance. To make it possible they have to change the mindset and become part of the daily lives of their users and assist them with challenges. To provide for a successful mission within the growing competitive market, public memory institutions have to have an effective theory and daring practice. Their publicly visible experiments demonstrate their new potential, strengthening resistance to threats and enabling reasonable compromise with the administration and sponsors.

The effort of PMIs could be probably called, after Aristotle, an “intellectus agens”. It is a facility of these institutions for abstracting intelligible and effective communicational contents from different sources of knowledge and human experience and employing them in the active way. They achieve social relevance by finding solutions to problem situations of their community. Heritage institutions strengthen the “immune system”

PMIs should consolidate self-confidence, pride and awareness of the distinctiveness of the identity of their community by using collections to reinforce the very life of their values. Without identity, the awareness of it and its recognisable public input, neither individuals nor communities can win any recognition. “Soft power” that PMIs care for has been recognized by business sector as an asset. The faceless, anonymous production will remain the reality but so will products with a “spirit of place” that count more: at last there is a rising, or rather, deepening pressure upon culture to yield profits.

Conventional curators may still lead in the quantity of locally centred knowledge, but they should understand the fine tissue of local identity in order to help it live and change while retaining its recognizable specifici-

ty. Curating the quality comprises that if an identity is threatened with extinction or distortion, museums and other PMIs should be creating the counteraction whose purpose would be to re-empower the dying values, to invigorate the fading features of identity.

Heritage is about quality as sifted from the past of changing human experience and about subtle ways to pump it back into society in quantity, quality and timing that corresponds with its needs. At the beginning of any effective museum or other modern heritage institution, there is the enormous conceptual condition: which community, or maybe even which layer or group of it do we want to contribute to? Before acting against or in favour, we have to decide upon the norm, the set of qualities we wish to retain or regain.

This is why no job of a public institution is at any occupation's discretion as norm makes sense only if adjustable and agreed. That makes the importance of building a strong profession real, as it would be able to engage in a wide effort of researched insight and transparent debate upon what kind of public service it should provide. In a managed and growingly hostile world, the heritage institution is an arbiter and opinion maker, friendly, subtle, unimposing, wise, - a strong partner stemming from the wider mission.

Heritage institutions are part of the counter-active defence, a way to sustain the changes while keeping the quality. “Only when men sense the waning history of a civilisation do they suddenly become interested in its history, and probing, become aware of the force and uniqueness of the ideas it has fostered“2.

I guess Bazin would have changed his mind consenting to see that not only history is waning but civilization itself. That explains why we have recently developed a general awareness that heritage matters. Coming into the spotlight, we shall either be instru2 Bazin, Germain. The museum age. University of Michigan., 1967. p. 6 THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 147

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of culture against the invasion of acculturation, the melting of cultures in irreversible process of entropy. Globalising processes in culture are harmful and should not be confused with internationalisation as they bring uniformity to cultures instead of connectedness. Acculturation in the sense of forcefully replacing one culture with another has been always a danger, only the processes today are more aggressive and quicker. In fact, the illusional, instant culture as created by the Western media and entertainment industries can annihilate fragile, shattered cultures and lead a process of dis-culturation. Deprived of their framework and support, identities vanish like animal species do in their destroyed natural environments. Specific cultures and identities exposed to degradation continue their lives only as commodity. In a sense, it is sad paraphrase of conventional museum procedure by which living culture is extracted from life and and “musealised” to continue its empty life in a museum. These stuffed cultures and identities are exactly the opposite of productive practice that science of public memory advocates.

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mental in earning money for the reigning oligarchies (the corporate world tries that with any value system) or in earning a future.

Staying ever tuned to the present and future and treating the past as a means to other goals but itself, we need also to re-invent our original selves, our institutions changed but still guarding the positive difference towards the others. The change by addition, guards the specificity of heritage occupations but builds their cumulative power into a new professional identity.

The wisdom PMIs generate should also be instrumental in bringing down the obsessive speed of the rollercoaster of contemporary development with its ever-increasing speed.

We need to get off as slowing down is probably the basic, banal suggestion of wisdom we have accumulated in our vaults. Memory is about quality. The flood of facts renders them useless and dangerous.

How should we understand Bazin (in the quoted book) claiming that both Athens and Rome were filled with libraries and museums before their decline? He must have been influenced by the harsh “Social contract”, written by a raging Rousseau just before the Revolution who complained that excessive indulgence of culture and arts coincide with decadence and disintegration. Maybe he just wanted to warn that only quality and purpose count. Maybe it is about forgetting the reasons of their creation, not the fact of their flourishing. Or, the reasons for their success were the unfulfilled expectations?

The eternal question of art (and science too, by the way) is how far in and in what way are they engaged in managing human destiny.

Though much ideologized and disputed, this dilemma seems easy under one condition: the utmost excellence of art and science, free and supported in their unquestionable freedom. That is the most we can offer to their protagonists and to the society, but in 148 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

never happens. Particular interests of power holders and peoples’ flight from freedom (as Erich Fromm brilliantly warns) make it an impossible and yet obligatory social project.

Now, in an age with no vision and absence of care for the future, it is only culture, as a set of values to create or return to, that can put us back on the track of humanist advance. With its formidable stored memory, selected and interpreted, used as sorts of antibodies, human civilisation may try to fight the defects of its worsening condition. Only a counter-action, strengthening resistance to threats can defend contemporary society from decadence and loss of cohesion. The mere Confucians’ phase, some li that would consolidate the rules of good social relationships will hardly be enough though much of it would help us: the rationality of social order, the sense of measure and a certain respect for the solutions suggested by successful customs and plausible tradition. Sticking to Chinese inspiration, we also the Thaoist wisdom, though not without the fighting spirit of the civil revolutions.

So, what citizens should do against threats in an alienated democracy? The prevention, suppression and "re-programming" should be combined because the ruling system proves to be dangerously unsustainable.

Citizens must engage ever anew in trying to re-conquer the public institutions (health, education...), "de-profit" public institutions, strike a better deal with corporations, boycott the corrupted politicians and administrators, talk the religious institutions back into the realm of privacy general spirituality and establish public control of the media (gone wildly corrupted); casino capitalism is not an obliging economic form that would require respect for being, say, a different ideology: mere greed is not ideology but just plain societal perversion imposed upon the economy and social behaviour. A new breed of politicians whose ideal is welfare society must

The great task of contributing decisively to sustainable development cannot be achieved without political awareness and social engagement. Democracy is the last utopia we have, a fortress of humanist ethics, assaulted daily and constantly besieged. Besides being a society of equal opportunities, democracy is primarily a society of the rule of law, of, respect for human rights (among them the right to being what one is, as being one's own and different from the others), the society founded upon virtues inbuilt into a value system. What we now have is, alas, a version of this that retains and encourages the right to vote but, through a range of barriers, denies the right to be a well-informed and educated voter. Understanding that public discourse might suffer from the misuse of collective participation, Voltaire distrusted democracy which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses, as it proved to be the case in modern times. Access to unbiased and objective information along with free education as the most effective way of bettering society is the conditio sine qua non of democracy. In short, public memory institutions

are facing challenging times: they are called upon to make their contribution, yet this cannot be done with their former occupational (soloist and “professional”) attitude and their social ineptitude. Their virtues are as old as their vices, but only relatively recently has their extraordinary potential become clear in terms of assisting society in problem solving.

It should be that PMIs, like art, come into existence out of need and challenge, that they live out of confrontation and action and that they die out of fulfilment. But “dying” is rather a reminding, unattainable picture of total realisation. Therefore, it suggests their constant rebirth which happens with some needs and challenges fulfilled by the beneficial response and others discovered to be dealt with. Art is not meant for investment, prestige or decoration but to render beauty and harmony to the world, eventually to be spread as the way of true, noble understanding the world and our environment. So archives, libraries and museums are about wisdom and truth. They are not about scientific facts illustrated by the objects but about enjoying and using the immense, stupendous experience of (as the claims is) 90 billion people like us who have once lived on the same planet. If we give up on the idea of progress as advance of human condition all that remains is but a selfish, brutal delirium of possessiveness of endless oligarchies who turn all the rest, be them people, institutions or natural environment into serving their insatiability. Progress cannot be reduced to technology and (neutral) knowledge. We cannot accept that artificial intelligence for the machines is the way to realize human intelligence. Public memory institutions with solid two centuries of institutional practice cannot accept acclaimed ideal that people are taught the art of short memory and machines the art of thinking. Knowing so much about the phases we have passed in developing our societies, they should consent to financialization of economy so that human THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 149

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have the ready set of eager professions to help them in all tasks they face, - especially the ones that present new challenges. Thus the civil society and private organisations are called on, but sometimes only to hide the fact that the public sector is discouraged to take up its role. To paraphrase Goethe, there are no new things in the world, only those discovered anew. Thus, the memory, researched, selected and communicated could offer most of the answers. Without professions, it is possible only to deconstruct and mutilate further the hard-earned civic society experience in the centuries long process of emancipation. Like public intellectuals, the public institutions are now largely compromised by the different extortions, benefits and subtle coercion coming from corporative world and corrupted politicians.

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work is devalued and their economic destiny dependable upon machination at the stock exchange. PMIs have even material proofs of their good insight and understanding of the nature of the world, - enough to denounce technological and biological re-invention as a perverse assault, only to acclaim its authorship and blackmail the entire world population into a disgraceful serfdom or slavery.

There are so many museums of water in the world. Naturally, as all we use it for drinking or extract energy from it. All of them should begin or end their site specific story by a permanent or, indeed, a changing exhibition on incredible misuse of it. Treating water with dignity is what they should teach citizens as well as making them aware that the criminal corporative strategies will soon turn water (like as the case with oil so far) into the object of new wars of unprecedented cruelty. There is no theme that lacks its own teleological dimension. PMIs contain myriad of un-showed stories.

3. Understanding of users

There is no segment of heritage practice which has not coloured itself with communicational orientation or community commitment. For example, archaeology which for a long time seemed only concerned with science turned very much to outward thinking in its aspects like community archaeology, public archaeology or participatory archaeology.

Conservation started to open up its premises to visitors since the middle 80s. Now it works often together with population and makes events or set us exhibitions. The avant-garde national library of France has been creating legendary exhibitions since its creation TWO DECADES AGO. Archives of France started already in the early 80s creating rare but celebrated exhibitions. There is hardly any archive of significance or any library of importance that does not run diverse, participatory programme for the users. PMIs are 150 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

coming of age and revealing their prevailing nature: although manifold in their structure, they are a communicational, cultural sector, a sort of social enterprise by the versatility of their business. To make clear, it is one that creates its communicational contents independently and in a non-profit status.

Democracy is an impossible project without the responsible choice of memory formed into the purposeful whole to serve the best interests of the public good, in making decisions that matter for society. Devaluing of the majority was expressed in all totalitarian societies by the term “masses� which was readily appropriated by a consumer society3 one way or another, though in pretentious subtleties. Unlike what one could expect, or what has been repeatedly denied in the media, many modern societies are generating crowds in a pejorative reality, intentionally illiterate and desperate. The proofs are many, but the economic traces are most convincing: the biggest and fastest growing class in Western societies is precariat4. The public education sector in Europe is still resisting but suffers important blows. The imposed and extensive privatisation, the rule of managers and the obsessive push for profits have lowered standards in the public sector so dramatically that we may claim that education is being gradually destroyed. The priority in structuring studies enabled the dictate of corporative sector. Vulgar utilitarian attitudes and issuing narrowing of the curricula produces social insensitivity and ignorance, as robots and their artificial intelligence to demand is to utilitarian or and the production 3 Mass culture, mass media, mass-consumption and then a term which bears hardly more respect, - crowd, so often used now, be it as a noun or in compounds is hard to perceive as morally correct.

4 https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/ book/the-precariat-the-new-dangerous-class/ ch1-the-precariat; the author of the book that stirred a lot of attention is Guy Standing.

Surveying the users is often understood as recording their wishes and ambitions. The reduced understanding of democracy and the standards of spiritual and social quality may suppose that most people know what they need. They quite possibly know what they want, but needs are a higher ground of mind, rather discouraged by the gigantic manipulative input through the media. It is a matter of honesty to admit that “vulgus” is not a Roman invention and that it disappeared with it. In the pink, impersonalised dictatorships of today, most populations are pre-conditioned and manipulated in such a subtle way that they see only what corporations can profit from and what politicians can score upon at election time. Once in position and with legitimacy, the media are pandering to people's baser instincts. Such a population is not likely to be a helpful interlocutor and therefore we need some kind of possible expertise to deduce plausible and true information from them. The professionalism and responsibility that goes with it is so much more urgently needed, be it in extracting true public opinion or in evaluating our working processes in order to satisfy their needs.

Some museums are currying favour with the

multitude and slide into “euphoria”5 but that is a short-term gain just as political systems resting upon the mob would be doomed to failure. In most developed countries only about half the population use PMIs, so the answers they need lay far around them, as the non-public, - those who never set foot in museums should be the priority objective of their endeavour. Surveys of the public (the part of population which is anyhow conditioned by education to come) brings usually self-indulging results. Moreover, they tend to be rather conservative and inert in seeing the chances of institutions. But, how to answer the needs of the silent, non-existent majority is a matter of professional research and good insight into the nature of memory and its public uses.

A counteractive museum, library or archive (or all of them together) could appropriate much interest if making exhibitions on democracy, on truth, on masses, crowd, classes, on human destiny…The “conspiracy” of modern democracy lies in the fact that people are offered the form while their capacity for taking part in the process is either intentionally overestimated (which is demagogy) or is drastically manipulated by spin (that is a fancy way of avoiding the word lie), by partial truths, truths mischievously contextualised to look like lies, or simply prompt the reactions of the lowest kind. The general population has been so depreciated that in the last few decades we have seen the term “crowd” entering the professional and official language as acceptable. “Crowd funding” and “crowd sourcing” can also be viewed as terms denoting methods of extracting the last penny from the population and for using their feelings or unemployment as the source of free labour, which in fact is often the case. With minds so totally engineered 5 šola, Tomislav. Eternity does not live here anymore – A short history of museum sins.

Zagreb, 2012.; „Euphoria“ is one of the misdoings.

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of ignorance becomes the outcome. Parallel processes of the sort are happening in the most of the public sector. The services for the masses are being impoverished and reduced which is in strong contrast to the calls for greater access, visitor friendly attitude and participation. However, the public memory institutions, - the latecomers to the arena of professions, are doing quite well in the prosperous part of the world, not elsewhere though. The unspoken, hardly rationalized underlying condition is that they stay out of the hot public issues and remain what they are, - therefore divided and separated occupations, - not turning into a self – confident, socially engaged profession.

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towards the dream of becoming a millionaire or marrying one, of becoming famous (business person, inventor, writer, composer...) or lucky (winning a jackpot or finding a dusty Rembrandt in the back room of an antique shop) “The Machine” (L. Mumford) can do whatever it wishes with the rights of voters. The ideological era in which public space was functioning upon the presumption that humans are noble beings (after all), when debates and revolutions were possible around the thesis of social equity, - has long passed. The poor now do not crave for quality: they themselves want to be wildly rich and powerful. They are infected by an existential fever, like suffering from social rabies and one sees it on all sides of the world6. The vanishing middle class splits between those sinking into latent poverty and those who, by their courage and determination use their creativity towards an egoist agenda. The well-being of a society depends on the number of people whose actions transcend their selfish purposes. The ruling value system is reducing that number daily. The world does not need great plunderers turning into great benefactors: why would any well-intentioned, normal person wish to possess a billion dollars or dozens of billions? Would this attitude deprive the world of development? Would it deprive us of everything that richness invents for the pleasure of the body and the mind?

We, the people, with our paid professionals, can do it, originally conceived as public good, and, indeed, we could use science and ethics to decide what luxury makes sense and what not. Can mission of PMIs imply that research and exhibitions are done on themes like “nature of richness”, or “luxury and its meanings in history and cultures”? Offering answers to the questions in the air may be a way to grand success.

6 My relatively recent visits to Venezuela, Cuba and China show that the majority of people, the crowd or the masses, are sheepishly craving for the exhilarating consumerism at any price.

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The most effective manipulation happens within the memory domain. All politicians and corporative decision-makers count on short-term public memory so that false promises always have chances. The tacit self-censorship in the media is parallel to public memory institutional orientation to the themes that cannot hurt the interests of the reality stakeholders.

Why is it that we think that museums and archives are about the distant, romantic or dramatic past taken as rather irrelevant for the present? Why does the public think that libraries are passive stores of scientific, non-fictional and fictional writings? Some science of public memory may ponder not only who and how, but what, why, to whom and in whose name, - no matter what the theme is. Generally speaking, the real understanding of users comes more from researching them than from asking their opinion. Whichever party in the social contract offers them a feeling of dignity and security, the essential, durable feeling of both, then that will be successful with them. Alas, they have to be facing the perilous and uncertain future to regain social sanity. The PMI cannot obtain financial security but can contribute to it by liberating creativity, by reminding us of qualities that are oblique or indistinct but existent in an individual, collective or public memory. The qualities of democratic society i.e. of social humanity are:equal chances, humanist ethics, objective information, free education, free access to knowledge, free social and health security, respect for ancestral heritage and respect for nature….

The list is always open and debatable though founded in the carters on rights of humans and rights of nature, but it outlines what makes the quality of life. The meaning of heritage is the wisdom usable for the maintenance of this quality of life provided by the cybernetic counter-action and efforts of continuation, whoever does them. For their

4. Public memory of a city as creative support to diversity

The world population is currently over 7.2 billion and the number grows by about 150 thousand a day7. By the year 2100 it will reach about 11 billion, what the United Nations’ estimates as the ultimate capacity of the Planet. But already by 2050, more than half of the world’s population will live in cities8. As ever, circling in a spiral, the world is re-inventing itself. Like in the Middle Ages, cities gain new significance. Their economic, social and political power will grow and may surpass that of the states. The citizens will again accelerate the history: “the soft power elements of creativity, innovation and imagination (which) should play an important role in the development process at national and city levels”9. As instances where this destiny is discussed multiply UNESCO joined with a document saying: Cities should devise policy strategies and initiatives responding to the artistic, cultural, social and physical fabric in urban settings in order to bolster the development of the local creative economy, upholding the diversity of individual and community culture and identities—all of which are key to the quality of life in cities10. There remains a need for a more articulated, integrated approach that can be 7 http://www.worldometers.info/worldpopulation/ 8 http://www.livescience.com/41316-11-billionpeople-earth.html 9 First Beijing Forum for Arts and City- Arts: Shaping the Future of the City - Beijing Consensus The Arts for Sustainable Urban Development and Creativity adopted on 23 October 2013 at Dadu Museum, Beijing; 10 This part of the text, until the end of chapter, I have prepared for that Forum where I took part as invited expert. The aim was to put a stronger stress upon collective, social and, particularly, upon public memory.

gained by putting a stronger stress upon collective, social and, particularly, upon public memory. The cities are the strongest physical and spiritual configurations of memory and the point is that they should retain and develop its best values.

The heritage of humanity reflects specific values systems and demonstrates that diversity is richness to be preserved. The freedom of expression given to minorities’ heritage and identity is the only long term guarantee of harmony and prosperity of any community.

When institutions of public memory communicate heritage of a certain community they should do it inclusively so that it reflects the whole diversity if it and that concerns entire diversity of population.

Heritage in all its forms is expression of soft power and can be used for the benefit of the city. Public memory is part of the social contract whereas heritage denotes a set of values that we recognize, study, collect, care for and communicate as the basis of identities that share it. Heritage places serve as civic spaces and bridges for dialogue and social cohesion.

In all cultures, religions, communities, heritage ennobles the soul and enriches the spirits differently and beneficially. Cities must guarantee to their citizens access to heritage as part of their cultural rights by which people can live in a just, peaceful, spiritually rich and tolerant society.

Development of heritage should be part of urban development strategies, planning and practices so that it becomes an important source for achieving sustainable urban development and social well-being.

The development of heritage care is built upon educated professionals of heritage occupations who understand the values of THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 153

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part the entire responsibility of PMIs to their users is contained in the answer if they can perform their specific task in a way that contributes to these qualities.

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concerted effort of the domain and ability to propose their capacity to other developmental agents of society to improve the quality of living in cities and of citizens' well-being. .

The continuous cooperation of public memory institutions and actions with arts and cultural spaces in a city enable creative communication as transmission and continuity of values and instil precious creative energy.

Public memory institutions should support the development of cultural and creative industries, offering them their knowledge, standards of excellence and reliability, both in sources and their interpretation so that they convey narratives and messages which, besides serving delectation, remain accountable.

Cities should strengthen the protection of their urban heritage: local value system, aesthetic accomplishments and cultural expressions because it is their unique pledge for specificity and uniqueness in the swiftly unifying world.

The heritage contribution to urban sustainable development can be expressed and captured through best practice approaches and advanced concepts which, by which education and capacity-building11 programmes can increase heritage literacy thus improving quality of living capability of self-realization and self-assurance. Taking into account different geographical and cultural backgrounds, people learn and disseminate knowledge differently; hence strategies on quality heritage education must be adapted to local conditions. However, these processes have to be led by heritage professionals 11 Planned development of (or increase in) knowledge, output rate, management, skills, and other capabilities of an organization through acquisition, incentives, technology, and/or training; http://www.businessdictionary. com/definition/capacity-building.html 154 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

who themselves have to be provided with obligatory education (which, until now is rarely the case).Public memory institutions are as yet weakly exploited source of social capital and experience residing in cities. They should be creatively engaged in the development of cities as hubs of cultural creation.

Their physical configuration of the cities is the barer and transfer of the amassed, sublimated memory and can be inventoried, read, interpreted and communicated as memory structures. The concentration of memory itself would make cities a decisive lever of entre development.

Cities should strive to increase cooperation between government (at all levels), international organizations, civil society, the private sector, the media and academia in a multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder manner12.

Well the message is simple and known from long ago: those who are dynamic and actively pursuing potential partners with common interests will thrive. Public-private partnership is an innovative model of cooperation that holds its advantages during the scarcity of public money. It has drawbacks as it requires highly responsible devotion to the public interest often compromised by the imposing private agenda and lack of professional integrity.

Though any community can be endangered in the survival of the qualities that constitute its character and identity, cities always present good examples. Some of them grow too quickly. The change can ruin their identity as it often does. So, how should PMIs react and what should they do besides usual, conventional action? When cities have a distinctive historic significance, the following tips might help: 1. Treat them as bed-ridden patients being 12 This sentence is a quotation from the Beijing document, see note 1.

2. Consider them infected by the “virus� of monetization or commoditization, attacking different parts of their body, vital mental functions and ability of judgement; all their values are turning into assets and made available for direct lucrative exploitation.

3. Protect them ever more by a regime that spares their energy; provide peace, fresh air, a kind atmosphere and reduce snobbish visitors if possible; fashions change quickly in tourism industry so if there is not time for sedimented, well reflected decisions there must be experts for heritage from the public sector who know best how to spare their chances for the generations to come.

4. Make sure they are not disturbed and humiliated: by noisy traffic, by giant cruisers, by mass tourism; perceived as a living organism, which they are, the cities have their communications and organs: the harmonious flow through them can be obstructed physically by repeated sudden visits of five or ten thousand visitors at one time who appear like a TROMB in a blood vessel. Their state literally resembles an infarct. But their very identity and nature can be suddenly changed by such pertaining risks.

5. If they should do something, and they indeed should: do not insist that they take over former functions: they are sick, most probably never to recover. They can be put into a glass case as a museum object as this is what museums do in all sorts of ways but,

though dignified in form, this state is a death of a sort; museums are not there for that.

Being doctors and not the undertakers, their concern is life in whatever decent for possible, maybe a renewed life altogether.

6. Therefore: let them do things they always wanted to do and never had time enough, discover in their past and present the talents they have neither perceived nor developed, provide them with assistance and favourable conditions; encourage them, but do not allow that they become effigies to themselves, jesters to the court of profit that enjoys to humiliate former glory. Above all (again speaking against the festivalization of the cities) do all you can to protect the normal life of their citizens keeping them happy hosts instead of unhappy traumatized servants.

7. Propagate the system of values they (not others) represent, make them the core of a resistance movement against the chaos and entropy: use their age, fame, authority, image, -to propose their particular wisdom, the knowledge they contain and have chosen to themselves to maintain and to others as a notable image and contribution. Some cities are themselves and in their myriad features monuments to ideas, ideals, great dreams, failures, adventures, defeats and victories, - almost unfathomable in their capacity to memorize noble ascents and unhappy falls of human project.

5. Heritage movement

True professionalism starts with absolute benevolence in sharing the expertise and spreading the professional wisdom among the laity. Professionals are givers and sharers. They are aware that heritage is everywhere, all equal and valid, making the whole only when it is considered as integrated and comprehensive no matter where it is stored or whether it is still used. The keenest THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015 › 155

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wounded, say, by a gang of entrepreneurs and developers who is after them; so, place the public institutions and civil organisations as the guards at their entrances; once entertaining account of harsh history, movies are also our reality. They are shaken by a fever in which their ability of judgement is questionable as they are subdued to coercion and manipulation.

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among them understand also that we are all in charge of heritage, while only some have chosen it for their career. Properly understood, they are in charge to be the leaders of the process, regular and knowledgeable in their multiple responsibilities concerning heritage. The process of refinement of memory, to history and then to heritage belongs to various experts not necessarily collaborating, but represents a gigantic collective effort in which the population takes an increasingly active part. It is the strategic duty and moral responsibility of heritage curators to spread the task of memory recording, of its selections and ways of dissemination helping natural social processes to happen.

Exposed to an unprecedented and aggressive change the world population realises that retaining identity is a question of any survival, - cultural, political and economic.

Losing one’s character or specific potentials be them called soft power or simply uniqueness seems to ruin chances, for prosperity and quality living. The task of PMIs is managing this process for the community and with the community, assuring the well selected and needed transfers of relevant experience.

Their mission is to act as catalysts and leaders in the process of awareness raising and issuing activism taking shape as heritage movement.

The movement is already there in some way through the rising membership of thousands of heritage organisations and through the mass-happenings like museum or heritage nights, days or weeks. It is a steady and gradual happening; rather imperceptible if regarded or measured in brief segments of time. Even the non-users (which are of course also the non-goers) increasingly feel that museums may be the rare public institutions left at their disposal and, maybe, at their side too. The polls on confidence to public institutions show that. It is the part of the policy of “restructuring” societal property, so much 156 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

advocated by the international monetary organisations. As the consequence of commoditisation, privatisation is being imposed even to the traditionally public domains. The privatisation in Europe pushes its way into the sector of traditionally official culture and heritage, but each time it encounters a rather strong opposition from all layers of society. But, paradoxically, the heritage sector is nevertheless becoming increasingly private by the fact that private subjects, be them individuals or corporations take up the initiative and found their own museums, not seeing any more a need for entering public domain via existing institutions. The phenomenon of amateurisation has become the peril and, in a sense, a chance for the heritage sector too.

It became rationalized as a phenomenon of the present relatively recently through the development of Internet and the new culture of participation, but actually applies to all the facets of life13.

The corporative sector is perfectly skilled to use the chances that scarcity creates. When marketing suggested that we get clear about who our stakeholders were, the question initiated a well needed discussion about the ownership of museums. In the European East the “boss” was the abstract “people” (the state, in practice) but the most advanced European countries enjoyed the difference as “people” were citizens, with well defined rights and seemingly a prosperous future.

In France it was always a proudly declared state standing up for its citizens as their incarnation. Now the citizenry is passing some globalizing tendencies and much is at stake of the former ambitions of the free society.

These citizens form our “community of users”, at different levels and contexts, but they need our beneficial presence. The discussion on entrance fees is as long as the existence 13 Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody - The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Group, 2008; 327 pp

Most people understand heritage as a natural phenomenon, a sort of common sense.

A step further, all are easily convinced that there are values and memories that make us what we are, and that the process of verbalizing let alone of recording the issuing narratives is far from being simple. Yet, in modern society, unlike in the primitive one, the slippery ground of collective memory can be crossed safely (without being trapped into mystifications, illusion, preconceptions or harmful biases) only by the help of science and, if possible, professional guidance. In a society of Great Greed15 anything is targeted to become a commodity and so the culture and heritage can become industries driven by profit. The excessive privatisation has im14 The former socialist countries where socialist ideas have compromised by the corrupt bureaucracy now live the hard experience of wild liberalism within an atmosphere of a general, imposed belief that left ideas have proven useless and discredited.

15 I have been using this syntagm, in my lectures and writings since the late 90s. It describes well, I believe, the essential character of troublesome times we live in.

poverished the modern state. This made it crucial to define the limits of the public sector and the activities that should be funded with public money. The private sector has found ways not only to privatise what was public before but to extort public money. If private education, administration and private prisons exist, why shouldn’t we renounce public ownership of museums, archives and libraries and sell them or give them over to private individuals or corporations?

It is an Orwellian scenario but a close one too. It coerces heavily culture and heritage to commercialisation because it sees there unexploited, potential earnings. The high price of opening to business is the gradual disappearance of public mission. The consequences are probably, in a strange way, even more serious than we know them in the commercialisation of health, education and public services. Generally it brings rising prices, lower quality, further destruction of the middle class, it gives a new push for the rich to get richer and causes further impoverishment of the poor. Though we have seen that the pretext of crisis can lead to the empowerment of imposing political figures without prior elections, - we still enjoy the potential of the massive vote. It has become crucial to the rise in the quality of information upon which voting is done. Therefore the general mindset has to imply sensibility towards the generative issues of heritage and identity, so that time for action is not spent on acquiring basic social and cultural literacy. There is no value that cannot be humiliated by the lack of expertise, knowledge and taste16. We could probably return our stolen wallets but hardly the stolen memory. To put societal memory in the private hands and make it dependable upon making profit even sounds like a dangerous development.

With a highly professional public memory 16 Ĺ ola, Tomislav S. Eternity does not live here any more - glossary of museum sins, Zagreb, 2012.

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of museums. It has intensified in the 80s and some status quo has been achieved, - most of them charging the entrance fees. The long discussion on free access is by far finished or abandoned, as the practice in United Kingdom where access to national museums is free still demonstrates. It continues to puzzle the economic and socially conservative societies, especially now when the legitimacy of profit has grown beyond traditional limits14.

No matter what will future bring (though it takes courage to be optimistic) the free access to public memory institutions will remain one of the great achievements of the spiritual ambition of the secular society. Our public memory institutions, however communicational, quotidian and secular, are in a sense also the temples of science and humanism, - a major historical contribution of civitas to the spirituality of society.

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sector supported by a wider, active citizenry, which is still not the case nowadays, cultural industries would have a good competitor and quality motives to earn their profits by working themselves for the common good, - at least to the extent of sustaining from doing the outward harm referring to the basic instincts of growingly illiterate public.

Fortunately, part of the public sector is in an unexpected way the activists, - representatives of the otherwise silent or suppressed majority. They are natural and beneficial response to the terrible fix in which the public sector finds itself. The best, the liveliest part of civil society, is led by excellent professionals which, of course, only means a salutary mix of power represented by the civic activism and good, experienced governance towards the strategic objectives of the society. English Heritage17 (until recently a state founded and financed institution) has 665,000 members who pay 45 pounds a year for their membership fee. The organization however, has more than 1,500 employees in various statuses, and 75% of the budget is public money, but it additionally realizes a third of it as own income. It maintains and takes care of 400 locations, which are annually visited by 5.5 million visitors. To make things better for the public memory of UK, this covers only one part of the heritage outside museums.

The other part is taken care of by a non-governmental organization National Trust18, which has 3.5 million members, 52,000 volunteers (who have contributed in the year 2007/8 about 2.3 million hours of work), in maintaining "their" 300 historic buildings, 45 monuments of industrial heritage (plus forests, lakes, swamps, villages ...) which were visited that year by 12 million visitors. These data are old and since then the National Trust has improved its performance in serv17 http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/upload/ pdf/Annual_Report_and_Accounts_0708. pdf?1247903125 18 http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-trust/ w-thecharity/w-thecharity_our-present.htm 158 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

ing the public need for identity maintenance.

Fortunately, the practice and the experience of National Trust has spread, by the power of good example and party as tradition in Commonwealth world-wide, so it made possible the hub organisation INTO (International National Trust Organisation) which organises regular meetings and has recently managed to include wider participation of its membership.

This is changing the professional atmosphere and both the state and the institutions are seeing new chances in an activist attitude. In Ireland, "Heritage Council" is a state owned, but "community based" organization, whose purpose is to "engage, educate and advocate, in order to develop a broader understanding of the vital contribution that our heritage makes to our social, environmental and economic prosperity."19 Fast growing number of organizations has begun filling up the space for action which is left out by the state institutions. In Poland Association "Propamatky" collects all the information concerning the heritage condition, needs, references to the media and politicians, available jobs, user education, magazine, tips to raise funds for the repair, restoration ... The association is a necessary and effective keystone of the heritage care system. Such Associations grow one after another, and their positive energy and commitment grow fast, overcoming the local boundaries. Asociacion Castano y Nogales, has, out of nothing, so to speak, emerged to be engaged in "network of trails that make up the core element of the European identity"; they may fail, but the positive energy will be, at least locally, to materialize as a 15 km long promenade and the experience and contacts gained will lead them further.

Interestingly, for these new, mobile tasks the 19 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_ Council_%28Ireland%29

There is a widespread often unspoken reticence of ceding culture and nature to patenting and private ownership and with the rise of humiliation imposed by the insolent, reckless 1%, we might see the protest growing. The oligarchies manage to suggest that such protests are political or ideological, or even leftist (whatever that may mean nowadays), and they build up repressive strategies to prevent them. But once the numbers increase and some professional structure articulates the claims for public control of societal memory, the voices of the civil society will appropriate the attributes of a movement. Heritage is part of human rights, an expression of public memory and a domain of freedom to be guaranteed. Even curators in it, though scientifically trained and responsible, will be more the leaders, - sort of shamans of the movement where their scientific concern will convert to an extent into an “ideology” of identity: acting as catalysers and guiding the processes with the rising participation of population they will support the crowds of votaries, followers and adepts.

After all, we know that the 60's, seemingly out of blue, emerged the ecological movement and turned into a doctrine of sustainable development. The latter has become a political topic for the many global political and economic summits. It has not been a triumphal march but we have preserved some chances for success. The heritage movement in making will not be as massive but will emerge

as still another popular response to the risks that the world faces.

The mission of the movement, only partly centred in institutions like museums, will be a multiple one. Ideally, it would be realised as a Total Museum20, an ideal consciousness about values so that no institution or rule would need to be applied to protect them.

This being outright impossible, in the harsh reality we shall just persevere in seeking ever growing awareness of the population for the matters of public memory and the ways it is formed. Equally, the ultimate realisation of the museum idea is dissolution of museums by the fulfilment of their mission, the same way that a completely healthy population could renounce their hospitals. An equally idealist goal in democracy might be to dissolve the state as a repressive mechanism due to the perfection of the system of self government. The idealist goals are practical as they provide orientation; being unattainable we only try to approach them as close as possible, to have them as a constant call for de-institutionalisation and freedom. Whether the movement will result in still more organisations on the local and global level21 and turn into a trans-sectorial network like a possible “Global Heritage”, an organisation yet to be, - comparable to Greenpeace and others of the sort, - matters little but pieces of this puzzle are being assembled by the logic that produces them: we have interests in heritage and interests necessarily get organised.

Text is excerpted from the book: “Mnemosophy – essays on the science of public memory” to be published in December 2015 20 Šola, Tomislav. Prema Totalnom Muzeju (Towards the Total Museum), PhD, 1985; University of Ljubljana; the integral version was published by faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, 2013.

21 World Federation of Friends of Museums, an organisation affiliated to ICOM has probably, though loosely and indirectly, over 6 million members.

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business world and politics find a common language with culture: Fondacion de Patrimonio Historico de Castilla y Leon, gives awards to high schools in their activities on discovering the local heritage. Numbering such initiatives is rather the matter of electronic media as only there can we trance this dynamic scene updating the swift changes.

Flexibility in the organization and keen interest in discovering the needs erupted in thousands of organizations.

a word from our partner

EUROPA NOSTRA Civil Society in Action for Heritage Europa Nostra is the European federation of heritage NGOs. Covering 40 countries in Europe, the organisation is the voice of civil society committed to safeguarding and promoting Europe’s cultural and natural heritage. Founded in 1963, Europa Nostra is today recognised as the most influential and representative heritage network in Europe.

What do we do?

Celebrating the most remarkable heritage achievements in Europe:

In partnership with the European Commission, Europa Nostra recognises the excellence and dedication of professionals and volunteers involved in cultural heritage. The European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards celebrates and promotes best practices in conservation, research, dedicated service, and education, training and awareness-raising.

Since its launch in 2002, a total of 415 outstanding heritage projects and initiatives have been awarded. The Prize is supported by the EU Creative Europe programme.

Europe’s most prestigious heritage awards scheme has been strongly promoted at the ‘The Best in Heritage’ conference since 2009.

Six winners of the 2014 edition, including two Grand Prix laureates and the Public Choice Award winner, will present and discuss their exemplary achievements at this year’s conference.

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Helping to save the most threatened heritage sites in Europe:

Europa Nostra campaigns to save Europe's endangered monuments, sites and landscapes, in particular through ‘The 7 Most Endangered’ programme, run in partnership with the European Investment Bank Institute and with the support of the Council of Europe Development Bank. In May 2014, the second list of The 7 Most Endangered, which features heritage assets in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Russia and Serbia, was published; and, from September to December 2014, joint expert missions to the sites were organised. In March and July 2015, Europa Nostra and its partners presented the technical and financial reports for the rehabilitation of the listed sites in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Romania.

Contributing to European strategies and policies related to heritage:

Europa Nostra contributes actively to the establishment of a real European strategy for cultural heritage and to the mainstreaming of cultural heritage in EU policies, actions and funding. In June 2015, during its European Heritage Congress in Oslo, Europa Nostra and the European consortium of the project 'Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe' (CHCFE) revealed the main results and strategic recommendations for tapping into heritage’s full potential by providing compelling evidence of the value of cultural heritage and its impact on Europe’s economy, culture, society and the environment. Following this conference, which was attended by high-level representatives from European policy circles, the CHCFE key findings will be further discussed at the European Parliament in September 2015. On the occasion of the World Heritage Committee' session held in Bonn in June-July 2015, top-level delegates from Europa Nostra and UNESCO met and expressed keen interest in further strength.

a word from our partner ≥ 2015 winners, juries’ chairpersons, Europa Nostra’s Executive President Denis de Kergorlay and EU Commissioner Tibor Navracsics (centre), Head of EU Delegation to Norway Helen Campbell and Europa Nostra’s Secretary General Sneška Quaedvlieg-Mihailović (left side) before the European Heritage Awards Ceremony at Oslo City Hall on 11 June 2015. Photo: Espen Sturlason

ening the existing cooperation between the two organisations.

What can you do?

There are many ways to get involved with Europa Nostra and to help us match our resources with our ambition.

Become a Member/Associate >>

>>

>>

If you are a heritage NGO based in Europe (e.g. association, foundation or museum), you can become a Member Organisation: min. annual contribution of €250; If you are a heritage NGO based outside Europe or a public body (e.g. regional or local authority, governmental agency, education or tourism body), you can become an Associate Organisation: min. annual contribution of €250; If you are an individual from Europe or beyond, you can become an Individual Member: min. annual contribution of €90

more info: www.europanostra.org

CREATIVE EUROPE Creative Europe is the new EU programme to support the cultural and creative sectors, enabling them to increase their contribution to jobs and growth. With a budget of €1.46 billion for 2014-2020, it supports organisations in the fields of heritage, performing arts, fine arts, interdisciplinary arts, publishing, film, TV, music, and video games as well as tens of thousands of artists, cultural and audiovisual professionals. The funding will allow them to operate across Europe, to reach new audiences and to develop the skills required in the digital age. The EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards and Europa Nostra’s network project ‘Mainstreaming Heritage’ are supported by Creative Europe.

More info: http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/ creative-europe

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ICOM

ICOM, Speaking The Language Of Museums The International Council of Museums (ICOM) is the world’s leading organisation in the museum and heritage fields, counting over 35,000 members in 137 countries.

A unique network of museum professionals and experts, ICOM has established standards of excellence and developed a number of tools and programmes to benefit the global heritage community.

As the climax of the annual cultural agenda worldwide, International Museum Day (IMD) continues to demonstrate the dynamism and involvement of the museum community. This year, more than 35,000 museums in 130 different countries found creative ways to educate the public about developing a sustainable society during IMD. Museums and cultural landscapes is the IMD theme in 2016, as well as the main thread of ICOM’s 24th General Conference in Milan, to be held from 3 to 9 July, 2016.

In 2015, ICOM worked closely with UNESCO to draft a recommendation on the protection and promotion of museums and collections, placing museums more explicitly at the heart of the exchanges between peoples and societies, to be adopted at the UNESCO General Conference during its 38th session in September 2015.

ICOM’s commitment to fighting the illicit traffic of cultural goods was reinforced this year with the publication of an updated Ira162 › THE BEST IN HERITAGE 2015

qi Red List. These vital tools classify endangered categories of cultural goods in vulnerable areas of the world in order to prevent their illegal sale or exportation. A Red List for Libya and a Turkish version of the Syrian Red List will be published by the end of 2015.

In order to enhance expertise and knowledge in the museum sector, training is also at the heart of ICOM’s activities, and the last two years saw several successful training seminars in China at the Palace Museum.

In 2015, ICOM has pursued its ambitious projects: acting on a worldwide level, coordinating actions to enhance museums of all types, working with international bodies, and developing reference tools for museum ethics and training.

ICOM Endowment Fund The ICOM Endowment Fund seeks to support initiatives shaping 21st century museums.

The Fund provides financial and operational support for activities which address the global community of museums, promoting the social role of the museums and their contribution to intellectual, artistic and heritage life.

The ICOM Endowment Fund’s actions meet the following objectives: enhancement of the social value of museums; support for innovation in museums; preservation of heritage and implementation of risk reduction measures; and strengthening of professional skills and capacity-building.

In supporting The Best in Heritage, the ICOM Endowment Fund endorses the development of standards of excellence for museums of the 21st century. The conference provides a space for inspiration and highlights innovative efforts in the museum and heritage sector, contributing to the broader aim of the ICOM Endowment Fund: to develop a worldwide network of museum professionals.

ICOM

MUSEUMS AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

www.milano2016.icom.museum

Credit: Roberto Mascaroni

3 - 9 July 2016

The 24th General Conference of the International Council of Museums – ICOM 3-9 July, 2016 in Milan, Italy The ICOM General Conference is a key international event for museum professionals, with debates, discussions and festivities over the course of a week on the theme: “Museums and cultural landscapes” Registration and more information at: www.milano2016.icom.museum

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The Best in Heritage

The world's only survey of award-winning museum, heritage and conservation projects

partners

sponsors

patrons and supporters

local partner

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THE BEST IN HERITAGE © European Heritage Association

based in Zagreb is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation, member of Europa Nostra, dedicated to promoting every aspect of professional excellence in heritage professions and doing it “by power of example”. The Association is tiny and will grow only through its own programme and those who assist it. "The Best in Heritage" conference, "Excellence Club" and "Global Love Museum" being our foremost activities.

Secretariat:

org.secretary@thebestinheritage.com European Heritage Association / The Best In Heritage Trg kralja Petra Krešimira IV, No.7 HR - 10000 Zagreb, Croatia Director:

Professor Tomislav Šola director@thebestinheritage.com Tel / Fax: +385 1 455 04 24 mobile phone: +385 98 468 158 Project manager:

Mr Luka Cipek pm@thebestinheritage.com Tel / Fax: +385 1 77 88 248 mobile phone: +385 91 525 04 77 www.thebestinheritage.com

Advisory Board:

Mr John Sell, United Kingdom, Chairman john@sellwade.co.uk Dr Willem De Vos, Belgium, Member devos.icom@outlook.com Ms Goranka Horjan, Croatia, Member ghorjan@emz.hr Mr An Laishun, China, Member als@ciae.com.cn Mr Claude Faubert, Canada, Member cfaubert@technomuses.ca Mr Vladimir Ilych Tolstoy, Russia, Honorary Member, yaspol@tgk.tolstoy.ru Mr Stephen Harrison, Isle of Man, Honorary member, heritage@manx.net

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European Heritage Association / The Best In Heritage Trg kralja Petra Krešimira IV 7, Zagreb, Croatia Editor-in-chief

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Luka Cipek Language editing:

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