Late last year there was a debate on the List concerning the need
to reform ICOM, inspired by the message sent out by ICOM Reform
Task Force's chairperson Bernice Murphy. The debate roused some
critique of ICOM's present way of functioning, a critique that I
would characterise mostly as impulsive, since the critique was
not - with honourable exceptions - followed up with constructive
suggestions. Still, impulsive critique comes from the heart, and
should be listened to.

There are lots of issues that need to be debated and I feel
uncertain about how to proceed. Last year I sent out questions
and alternatives, rather than my own opinions. This time I feel
tempted to present my own opinions as of now plus points that I
think should be considered as a more or less complete picture,
but fear that an eventual debate will then concentrate on a few,
popular issues, leaving many important points not debated.
Nevertheless, I'll try this approach and see what happens.

I discuss the following issues:

ICOM and personal economies.

Meetings of the Advisory and Executive

National committees

Membership

Membership benefits

Membership and benefits for institutions

Membership in international committees

ICOM's Triennial General Conferences and participation fees

ICOM Economy: can money be saved through more use of electronic
media?

ICOM Economy: can money be earned through advertisements in ICOM
News?



ICOM and personal economies.

There were a lot of complaints on the List last year about how much of
one's private funds that has to be used in order to take up office in
ICOM. This is regrettably true, but in my opinion there is no way ICOM
can subsidise office holders in general. ICOM's economy is dependent on
what you and I and other members are paying into the organisation. If
we pay more we get more, but we'd have to pay a lot more should we
subsidise office holders. Ironically, the large number of passive ICOM
members is subsidising the ones that are active in the international
committees. A higher percentage of active members would result in the
resources being more thinly spread.

A point to consider would be to create a foundation for office holders
from poor countries (or use and strengthen the existing ICOM foundation
for this purpose). Such a foundation would probably inevitably depend
on the increased payment of ICOM members from wealthier countries.

The way to solve the problem of the strains on our personal economies
is to try to get money from our institutions, be inventive in applying
for grants and/or get some from our national ICOM committees. This is
what we all have been doing and will continue to do. But through
strengthening the national committees, we have a better chance of
succeeding. More about this under National committees.


Meetings of the Advisory and Executive

It has been suggested that e-mail contacts may make it less necessary
to meet that often (Advisory once a year, Executive twice). I think it
is necessary to meet face-to-face once a year, but the meetings could
be far more effective if the issues that were to be discussed and
decided upon could be pre-discussed in the e-mail-list for members of
the Advisory and Executive. In order to do this; the papers must be
distributed early enough to make a pre-discussion possible.

The advantage of having all Advisory and most Executive meetings
between general conferences in Paris is that it is close to the ICOM
administration and we have easy and well-established access to the
UNESCO auditoriums. However, the routine of having meetings in Paris
gives an extreme advantage to the European members and creates a
situation where representatives from the wealthiest countries have the
cheapest access to the meetings.

A point to be considered could be to have the Advisory/Executive
meetings in other venues than Paris, making transport costs more evenly
distributed for representatives from other parts of the world. Say
rotating meetings between Paris, Mexico City, Sydney and Nairobi (they
all have in common that they are important air traffic centres in their
part of the world). The European representatives might find the
consequences for their private economies of carrying through this
proposal absolutely impossible, but such an "impossible" situation is
now normal for our colleagues from other parts of the world. The pros
and cons of such a proposal should however be carefully considered: we
may find out that flying to Paris from the other end of the world is
just as cheap as flying to Nairobi, etc. Distance is not necessarily
what weighs most in the price of air transport. And the cost of moving
the ICOM administration ...


National committees

I do not think ICOM should subsidise national committees. National
committees can be strengthened economically by being allowed to charge
more than the 10% above what is sent to ICOM in Paris.

However, the best way to strengthen a national committee is by
establishing a close relationship with the national museum
organisation. A close relationship may increase the legitimacy of
international museum work and may open for grants from the ministry of
culture or other national institutions.

The situation today is that in some countries, the national ICOM
committee and the national museum organisation is one and the same, in
others the relation is very close (for instance by having a shared
secretariat). In others again there seem to be no or very little
connection between the national ICOM committee and the national museum
organisation. In my opinion, this latter situation is both unfortunate
and not functional. In such cases I think ICOM should remind the
national committees in question about article 14, pt. 15 in the
statutes, and stress the positive potential a close connection with the
national museum organisation has.


Membership

From time to time one is (very unofficially) told that some national
committees are extremely restrictive in granting ICOM membership to
their museum professionals. This being the case or not, it should be
made clear that a national ICOM committee cannot deny a museum
professional who fulfils the criteria in the ICOM statutes (article 6
and 2, pt. 2) membership in ICOM. Co-operation with the national museum
organisation may help prevent unconstitutional denial of membership,
but it should also be possible for ICOM centrally to react if such
practices are found.

A point to consider is to allow for collective membership in ICOM for
all members of a national committee. Such collective membership could
be a result of negotiations with each national museum organisation
wanting such an arrangement. This may increase the number of ICOM
members dramatically, but not increase to the same extent the income
from membership fees, since a discount is inherent in arrangements of
this character. On the other hand, the higher the number of members,
the less expenses pr. member.

The advantage would be that ICOM through this could get rid of some of
the geographical bias of membership distribution; the membership
benefits will be more universally respected (and may be extended); and
it may create new income possibilities for ICOM from commercial sources
(more on this under Membership benefits and under ICOM economy).


Membership benefits

It is generally acknowledged that the ICOM-card giving free access to
museums may be the main reason for membership for perhaps a majority of
the ICOM members. This may partly explain why ICOM have relatively few
members in the USA, which is almost a continent in itself and the
membership benefits of the national organisation are just as good as
ICOM's. And it may partly explain why ICOM have many members in Europe,
which have many separate countries and there is a lot of travel between
the countries. For the same reason, an eventual EU-based museum
organisation coming up with the same benefits as ICOM may possibly in
the long run reduce the number of ICOM members in Europe.

I think ICOM has a potential for extending the membership benefits,
achievable partly through making ICOM a more truly global organisation
where membership benefits are respected everywhere (which is not at all
the case now) through closer co-operation with the national museum
organisations, and partly by increasing the number of ICOM members to
such an extent that co-operation with ICOM becomes interesting for
international media, carriers, hotel chains, etc, etc, etc. As of now,
ICOM is too small and too limited: for instance any automobile drivers'
organisation in one country has far more members than ICOM has world
wide. To carry the comparison further: automobile drivers'
organisations have lots of membership benefits of special relevance to
drivers. The challenge would be to identify and find partners for
benefits of special relevance to museums and museum professionals.


Membership and benefits for institutions

Given the cost for institutional membership and only three ICOM-cards
as benefit, it is surprising that ICOM has institutional members at
all. But I assume the institutional memberships are based on the
attitude that ICOM should be supported and a feeling of solidarity with
the museum world at large. Which is a truly recommendable attitude.

Lower the fee and/or give more cards, would seem to be the obvious
solution for attracting more institutional members.

Personally, I fear that giving out more cards may make it less relevant
for museum professionals to become personal members. The result could
be large numbers of de-personalised memberships under the control of
museum directors, which again could affect negatively the personal
engagement in ICOM's activities and hamper the free exchange between
all kinds of museum professionals.

Lowering the fee is a much better solution combined with trying to
develop membership benefits of special interest for institutional
members.


Membership in international committees

Some years ago a representative in the Advisory suggested that all
members of ICOM could choose two international committees and be voting
member in both. I think this proposal is sensible because it is much,
much simpler than the present system with voting and non-voting
members. It is simpler for the secretariat, simpler for many members
who no longer can remember which of the three committees they are
voting member in and maybe it forms a more just basis for the
distribution of money from ICOM.

Of course, changing from the present system to a new one is costly in
terms of labour at least. But it could be combined with a campaign
aimed at 1) receiving members' e-mail addresses (see below on ICOM
Economy: can money be saved...") and 2) reselecting international
committees.

Additionally, the forms on which one applies for membership should
contain selection of international committees in one and the same form,
and not on two separate forms, like now. Thus the applicant sees the
selection of international committees as a matter of course.


ICOMs Triennial General Conferences and participation fees

In some of the debate on this List last year, it was argued that the
participants of the conference should pay the real costs of arranging a
General Conference and that it was wrong to use that much money for
subsidising participants rather than using the money more generally in
ICOM's other activities.

With this I disagree for the following reasons: Firstly, the funding
obtained and used for General Conferences are earmarked for that
purpose and has been raised within the host country. It cannot be used
by ICOM for other purposes. Secondly: without subsidising, the General
Conferences would be too expensive for each participant. It may be
added that grants for participants from poor countries are already a
regular part of the budget of General Conferences.


ICOM Economy: can money be saved through more use of electronic media?

Several of the international committees are either now sending out
their newsletter through e-mail to those that have access to this
service, or are contemplating to do so. In this there are large sums to
be saved, in fact most of the money allocated to the int. committees
from ICOM are used for postage.

I believe that - no matter which policy ICOM chooses to follow - ICOM
should as soon as possible launch a campaign towards all its members
with the aim of collecting e-mail addresses. Not a feeble campaign that
few responds to, but an easy-to-answer-on-the-front-page-of-ICOM News
campaign (and at the same time members should be asked to anew indicate
which international committees they would like to be members of).

I am sure ICOM can save very large sums by publishing ICOM News on the
Internet and sending it in a paper version only to those without
Internet connection. To those with Internet connection, a message
should be sent telling us that the latest issue are now to be found on
this-and-that Internet address. The objection to this is that fewer
would read an electronic version of ICOM News than the paper one. This
is true at first, but not necessarily in the long run, when this way of
publishing becomes common. It is a matter of habit and changes in habit
sometimes comes fast these days.

Likewise, the heavy piles of papers for the Advisory and Executive
should be distributed electronically to all that can receive it, just
asking for a confirmation that the "papers" have been received. I find
it odd that ICOM still asks us to confirm participation or apply for
this and that by mail or fax, instead of urging us to answer by
e-mail.


ICOM Economy: can money be earned through advertisements in ICOM News?

Even with the current number of members, one would think ICOM News was
attractive for advertisements. With a strongly increased number of
members, advertisements could make ICOM News an income earner, even in
a paper version. I do not think advertisements in any case will make
ICOM rich, but it may pay part or all of the expenses connected to ICOM
News.


Well, that's it so far. I would like to come back separately to the
question of international committees (The Core Question in my opinion)
and to questions on the composition of the Advisory, the Executive and
committees appointed to investigate special issues.


Any comments? Remember: Proposals for the reform of ICOM is under way
through the Reform Task Force. This is our chance to bring good
suggestions and points to consider and positively influence the
process.


Per B. Rekdal

Chairperson ICME


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