The Future of Museums: Recover and Reimagine
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up.
Pablo Picasso
One of the things you want to do when you are in Paris is to schedule a visit to Louvre Museum and have a glimpse of “Mona Lisa”, the world’s most famous painting. Make an impact in the domain you have chosen to pursue, and dream of your replica finding a place in Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. When you enter the museum, you get disconnected from the present, and the time machine rolls back, and you get connected with the era the world has gone through. It is like listening to your favourite music and mind leaving the present and going back in time, you heard it for the first time and start reliving the past. The museum is a sea of nostalgia where everyone desires to cross it and go back to that time.
Observation of “International Museum Day” started in 1977. Established due to the initiative of “The International Council of Museums (ICOM)”. The observation is to enhance awareness of the role museums plays in the development of society. Museums are a necessary means of cultural exchange, enrichment, and development of mutual understanding among people. The theme for this year, “The Future of Museums: Recover and Reimagine”, encourages the identification of new practices of creation, business models and innovative solutions.
A life accumulates a collection: of people, work, and perplexities. We are all our own curators, that you can judge a society by the quality of its museums.
Richard Fortey
Paleontologist & Natural Historian
2020, the year passed by, has been like no other. The COVID pandemic has engulfed the world abruptly and for so long. Every aspect of life, the interactions with our loved ones and the way we work, got affected. It did not leave museums either, with the cultural and tourism sector being most affected. Museums and the people working for them are facing severe economic, social, and psychological repercussions. The crisis has catalysed the community about the way museums can function. An increased focus on digitisation and the creation of new forms of cultural experience and dissemination is emerging.
The advent of technology and smartphones and their use has created another dimension to visiting museums and historical places. People are interested in capturing and preserving for future reference, ignoring being there and enjoying the present. The obsession of capturing and sharing it on social media has assumed such gigantic proportions that it is destroying the canvas of preservation.
The ancient heritage of a country, its civilisation, art not only matters of that country but to the entire world because it gives the experience of an old era. There are many museums, such as art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, and children’s museums. It is a huge responsibility to protect and take care of them all.
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Michelangelo
International Museum Day 2021 will focus on rethinking the museum of the future to meet the challenges of the present.
Toons: Reema Jaiswal
Logs: Sai Baba
(Toonlogs on this theme is being written for the second time the Toonlogs on the theme of Museum Day. The first time it was in the year 2020)
