UMAC holds elections for the Board in 2022 and the candidates are announced today.
Learn who they are and what they want to do in UMAC (and for UMAC) here.
Candidates for the next UMAC BOARD
UMACJ: New issue published
A new issue of the University Museums and Collections Journal has just been published. You can access Vol. 14 No. 1 here.
New issue UMACJ: Pedagogy Hub
University collections and museums are increasingly used for teaching. The latest issue of the University Museums and Collections Journal (Vol. 13, No. 2), edited by Alistair Kwan and Andrew Simpson, brings together essays from all over the world on the roles of university collections for state of the art pedagogy.
As Alistair Kwan writes in the issue: “As this collection of essays shows, there are important things for university museums and collections—as hubs—to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning, and to the steering of our universities into exercising their sociocultural, epistemic and economic privileges more critically, more wisely, more ethically, more influentially over the coming century of widely anticipated struggle.”
Access the issue here.
New Museum Definition
Last week, the ICOM Advisory Council approved the museum definition proposal to be voted at the General Assembly in Prague next August.
“A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”
Read more here.
ICOM Prague registration deadline extended
Two more issues of UMACJ in Chinese
A complete volume of UMACJ — volume 12, comprising 2 issues — has been translated into Chinese and is now accessible.
The translation is a result of the ongoing collaboration between UMAC and the University of Shanghai Museum.
Please read UMACJ Chinese version here.
Museums and Museum Professionals in Ukraine
ICOM Call for Donations to Support Museums and Museum Professionals in Ukraine
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) would like to acknowledge the significant outpouring of support from the global museum community for the protection and valorisation of Ukrainian cultural heritage since the start of the invasion by armed forces of the Russian Federation. ICOM expresses its gratitude for the many offers of assistance received since the beginning of the conflict, a testament to the solidarity between the museum professionals and cultural actors in general.
Continue reading in ICOM website.
New IMAGINATIONS videos published
Learn more about the daily lives and aspirations of young museum professionals around the world.
Zhao Ke, Co-Chair of UMAC Futures and Director of the Museum of Electronic Science, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, CHINA, has released three more videos of the series IMAGINATIONS:
- Holly Millward, Australia
- Mohamadou Moustapha Dieye, Senegal
- Rebeca Bombonato, Brazil
The videos can be seen in UMAC YouTube channel. Here is a shortcut.
Ukraine: Appeal from ICOM POLAND
Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,
in these dramatic days for Ukraine, the Polish Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM Poland) is asking for your support in our efforts to help Ukrainian museum professionals.
In the third week of the Russian aggression on Ukraine, Poland received over 1,7 millions of refugees, mainly women, children and the elderly. Extensive help is being offered by the Polish population and the local and state governments to assist them. They often arrive with few, if any, belongings and are in need of shelter, food, medical supplies and so on.
In Ukraine people are not only fighting the aggressor, but also try to protect and save the cultural heritage: museums, libraries, onuments, architectural gems. Polish museums and Ministry of Culture and National Heritage are organizing help for museums and cultural institutions in numerous Ukrainian cities.
What do we do?
ICOM Poland decided to focus on the needs of the museum personnel that found refuge in our country. With the assistance of ICOM General Secretariat we established an Ukrainian speaking office and started to locate persons scattered throughout Polish cities. We plan to provide 3-months individual grants to the museum professionals that will apply. These grants should help them to accommodate their first needs.
At the same time, our office will act as a contact point between the grantees and Polish museums and cultural institutions, so that they may find a job and a welcoming professional milieu. The Polish state already simplified the necessary employment formalities to the minimum.
Continue reading here.
RELEASE: UMAC GUIDANCE ON RESTITUTION
After extensive and in-depth open debate, UMAC is releasing the final version of the document UMAC Guidance for Restitution and Return of Items from University Museums and Collections.
The document is the outcome of the project UMAC-ER: The Ethics of Restitution and Repatriation (2020-2021), chaired by Vice-Chair Steph Scholten (The Hungarian, University of Glasgow, UK), supported by ICOM and involving partners such as ICOM’s Committee for Professional Ethics (ETHCOM), ICOM Committee for Collections and Museums of Ethnography (ICME), ICOM Australia and UNIVERSEUM.
The document can be accessed here.