At its meeting in Paris yesterday (5 December) the ICOM Advisory Committee
- representing each of its more than 150 national and international
committees and affiliated organisations - agreed to submit the following
updated version of the 1974 international definition of a museum to ICOM's
next General Assembly of representatives of ICOM's 16,000+ members, to be
held in Barcelona, Spain, on 6 July 2001:

"A museum is a non-profit making permanent institution in the service of
society and its development, and open to the public, which acquires,
conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for the purposes of
study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their
environment.

"(a)  The above definition of a museum  shall be applied without any
limitation arising from the nature of the governing body, the territorial
character, the functional nature or the orientation of the collections of
the institution concerned.

"(b) In addition to institutions designated as "museums" the following
qualify as museums for the purposes of this definition:

"(i)  natural, archaeological and ethnographic monuments and sites and
historical monuments and sites of a museum nature that acquire, conserve
and communicate material evidence of people and their environment;
 (ii) institutions holding collections of and displaying live specimens
of plants and animals, such as botanical and zoological gardens, aquaria
and vivaria;
 (iii) science centres and planetaria;
 (iv)  non-profit art exhibition galleries;
 (v)   non-profit institutions or organizations undertaking conservation,
research, education, training, documentation or other activities relating
to museums and museology;
 (vi)  cultural centres that facilitate the preservation, continuation
and management of tangible or intangible (living heritage) resources."

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This definition is of great importance beyond the membership of ICOM
itself since it is very widely used by other official bodies at the
national and international level.

Also, the proposal for a new top level Internet domain of .museum,
recently agreed by the official international domain-naming body, ICANN,
explicitly links .museum to the ICOM definition of a museum.


Patrick Boylan

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