Michel Van-Praet wrote:
>L'ICOM a donc un large potentiel de développement si elle répond aux
>demandes des professionnels des musées et leur ouvre des perspectives
>nouvelles.

I could not agree more, and I take as granted that this is the basic
attitude of all participants on this List and the very reason for our
debates.

There is nothing wrong with being "old" and I do not think any of us has
meant to express such an attitude. One of the phenomena of present times
that I believe to have observed is that there is no longer such a clear-cut
distinction between the ideas and attitudes of younger and older people. I
think we should be reminded that this discussion started with Josephine
Thang'wa asking for the participation in ICOM of "both the younger and
older professionals". And I agree with those being a bit worried about the
- at least seemingly - lack of young professionals being active in ICOM. I
think the contributions to this discussion are very fruitful, and have at
least given me several ideas about how to approach this problem within ICME.

But the discussion have dealt with several different issues:

A) Informal strategies for attracting young professionals (good ideas have
been presented).

B) The possibility that the members, and especially the board, of a
national committee intentionally or unintentionally tend to reserve the
participation in the activities of ICOM for the older, very established
members of the museum profession.
This eventual challenge I guess must be dealt with within each country -
unless there should be a practice regarding membership that is in open
violation with the ICOM statutes.

C) Whether ICOM should allow students to become members.
Personally, I would like to hear more of the pro's and con's. And there are
several questions: Should they be allowed to be elected to positions? How
does one know when their membership should be terminated without
considerable bureaucracy? In principle I am in favour, but I do fear it
could add to the European dominance because of the extreme difference in
the economic possibilities of students in different parts of the world. On
the other hand, there cannot be such an enormous number of them. Anyway,
could anybody come up with a balanced list of advantages and disadvantages?

Per B. Rekdal
ICME chairperson


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