Bảo tàng lịch sử Quốc gia

The annual meetings are above all a unique opportunity for museum professionals and members of ICOM to reflect on the challenges facing museums today. This year, Chris Whitehead, Professor of Museology and head of the Department of Media, Culture and Heritage at the University of Newcastle (UK), and a member of the International Centre for Culture and Heritage Studies in Newcastle, will kick off the meetings with a keynote address on Wednesday 7 June.

Whitehead has trained and worked as an art historian and art curator, but his broad research activities today encompass museums of different types – especially history museums – and heritage, with particular emphases on the cultural politics of memory, display, knowledge construction and interpretation. He is currently working on political uses of the past, time and place and contested histories and heritages where these relate to contemporary social tensions and conflict. In 2017, he served as a member of the scientific committee tasked with tackling the particularly delicate theme of International Museum Day, Museums and contested histories: Saying the unspeakable in museums.

The annual meetings will also be an opportunity to discuss the procedure and timetable for selecting candidates for the 2022 ICOM General Conference. Participants will furthermore get the chance to attend three workshops: the first on the definition of museum (with Jette Sandahl, Chair of ICOM's new Standing Committee on Museum Definition, Prospects and Potentials), the second on strategies for the UNESCO recommendation on museums, and the third on testing the new member database. On this occasion, ICOM will also unveil its 2016 Annual Report and the new edition of its Code of Ethics.

We wish all of the participants a fruitful series of professional meetings. For more information, log on to ICOMMUNITY.