NEMO Annual Meeting in Amsterdam 2004

Czech Museums Association in 2002-2004

The last time the representative of Czech Museums Association visited the annual meeting of NEMO was in the year 2001, and so let us to inform about the activities of our Association in last three years.

At present we have implemented the extensive project called „Museums and Professionalism for the 21st century,“ supported by the foundation Open Society Fund and the Czech Ministry of Culture. First part of this project was mapping and finding the suitable model for the registration system of museums in ČR based on the structure of professional and ethical standards. Creation of this system is one of the main tasks of our activities in 2003-2006.

Another part of the project was the organization of the international conference called Museum and Change, which took place in October 2002 in the National Museum in Prague. About 250 participants from 7 European countries attended this conference and we hope that we will manage to fulfill our intention to start many triennial international museological conferences in our central European area. We will return to this intention later.

The third part of the project Museums and Professionalism was the opening of the School of the Museum Propaedeutic as a one-year study for training museum employees. At present the third year of this School is running; 80 students attend this year. 120 students finished the former two years.

The fourth part of the project was the finding of the suitable model of the national museum competition and starting its first year, which we managed in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and many other partners. Now the third year is running, which is announced in five categories as follows: Museum Exhibition of the Year, Museum Publication of the Year, Museum Event of the Year, category called Let’s Visit the Museum with Us for the accompanying museum programs and last the Award of the Czech committee of ICOM.

Editing activity, publishing of museum magazine, publication on the Internet, forming of subject databases, promotion of our branch by means of tourism fairs etc. belong traditionally among the standard activities of our Association. Although it is not possible to name concretely all the projects in this short period of time, let me stop mention a new one of them. This year we organized together with the National Museum the First Prague Museum Night. Thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture and Traffic company of Prague museums opened their gates to citizens and visitors of Prague for the first time also at night on 4 June 2004, museums prepared special programs and exhibitions just for this occasion. 50,000 visitors attended this action according to our modest guess. In consideration of the responses in regions we have decided to organize the Feast of Museum Nights in three weeks at the turn of May and June 2005; museums from the whole Czech Republic may participate in this project.

Jointly with the Ministry of Culture, other field associations in the sphere of libraries, archives and preservation of monuments and also under experience with catastrophical flood in summer 2002, our Association formed the Czech Committee Blue Shield, within the activities of which we implemented last year the research of danger factors endangering museum collections and state of care and security management in museum institutions. This year also the colloquium Safe Museum took place, which was directed at education of museum employees in the field of security management and preventive conservation.

Czech Museums Association carried out its regular annual meeting, which is held once in three years. Essential alterations in structure and authorities within our Association were accepted on this 7th meeting. We strengthened its field organization and thus the representatives of our 18 committees jointly with the representatives of the biggest museums in the country gained the valid vote at decision-making about activities of our Association (only the representatives of regional structure and members of the executive board had them up to now). The function of the executive director was created and the role of the professional workplace of AMG was strengthened.

Now let us return to our intention of triennial international conferences. We plan to organize the second international conference from 8 - 10 November 2005 in Prague. The conference will keep its original title „Museum and Change“ and it will be directed at the role of the vocational associations in museology, volunteers, collection mobility and digitization. Within three conference days also the annual meeting of the International Committee for Museum ManagementINTERCOM will be held. We invite to organize also the annual meeting of The Network of European Museums Organizations during our conference, also in consideration of the fact that Czech Museums Association will celebrate a 15-year anniversary of its existence.

Pavel Ciprian, The Czech Association of Museums