On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, Per Rekdal wrote:

++++ CLIP] ++++

> Now: what if we had an international committee set up to last for say six
> years, constituted for the sole purpose of discussing cultural diversity?
> Or cultourism? What if we had an international committee set up for six
> years discussing the educational methods in modern art museums? Or a
> committee just for discussing the meaning in modern society of putting
> indigenous cultures into natural history museums, while the culture of the
> "whites" are found in the history museums? Or an international committee
> debating repatriation issues?

========================

Per:

I agree with you - and that's very much how ICOM operated originally
before its structures became formalised (or should that be fossilised?).

However, on your first example above, that is EXACTLY what happened.

A broadly based Ad Hoc committee on cultural diversity issues was set up
in Quebec in 1992, chaired by Amareswar Galla of Australia, and its final
report and recommendations were adopted in 1998 at Melbourne (in both the
General Assembly Resolutions and ICOM Forward Programme for 1999-2007).

In between there was - apparently - very widespread consultation and calls
for active participation; two (or was it three?) drafts were prepared and
distributed, and the committee reported at (almost) every annual Advisory
Committee and at the Stavanger and Melbourne General Conferences.

However, it was only too clear that very little information on this
important and very topical work got through to the ICOM membership as a
whole.  The fact that someone as active and conscientious as you seem
unaware of all this is not a matter on which to criticise you in any way.

Instead, it raises very serious questions about the channels of
communication within ICOM.  Without thinking for more than a few moments I
can immediately recall several other equally important issues and projects
of my nine year period on the Executive Council about which information
and participation similarly never seemed to get beyond the (overworked)
chairpersons of National and International Committees who make up the
Advisory Committee.

I am not saying that we should go back to the earlier practice of ICOM
(and its pre-war predecessor the International Museums Office) and print
the Minutes (and key reports) of Advisory and Executive meetings in full
in ICOM News.  However, that did at least mean that any ICOM member
interested in a particular topic could find out what ICOM was thinking
about it.  Also, I know that a few National Committees do include fairly
detailed reports in their national newsletters.  However, we need to find
some effective way of communicating such information directly with the
more that 99% of ICOM members who are not on the Advisory and Executive.


Patrick Boylan


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