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MUSEUMS AUSTRALIA(VICTORIA) INC.
Museums have a vast array of functions, roles, and settings. No two are
exactly the same. They represent the vision of their communities to long-term
stewardship of cultural material, as record, as inspiration and as a resource
for the future.
In Victoria museums demonstrate achievement as well as creative innovation
across many areas of practice - use of new technologies to build audiences
and deliver programs, strong collaborations with regard to tourism opportunities,
collection management, exhibition development and other programming, and
long term industry development planning. We have an immediate setting of
growing interest in local and national identity, and in how cultural precincts
and cultural tourism can energise and sustain communities, and growing numbers
of public users of museums.
The sector also faces challenges. Museums are as diverse as their communities
and fulfill multiple roles - donors, sponsors, volunteers, visitors, students,
other community groups, stakeholders and so on, have widely varied expectations.
The demands of accountability and shrinking resources, and also the growth
of an audience focus within the industry itself, have also created pressures
on museums to develop in ways quite different from what may have been their
historic role. Significant collections are managed by small groups of volunteers,
working in often isolated circumstances. Flexible and practical strategies
are needed to preserve this material, in the hands of those it is most significant
to, in such a way that it is meaningful and accessible to others.
Critical issues in the sector remain, for example: developing new recurrent
audiences, at a time when there is immense competition for leisure time
and discretionary income and when even a minimal museum operation can involve
an unsustainable cost.· access to effective targeted skills development
and mentoring networks fostering awareness of the value of museums among
the immediate and broad community· bringing the benefits of innovative
technologies, standards and networks to the fore within all museums, and
through them to the 'museum consumers' - the growing number of public users
of museums engaging the commitment of people, young people, especially
in volunteer-managed museums. This is inherently connected to broadening
relevance and opportunities for interpretation of material.·demonstrating
and delivering tangible returns on museum investments, but parallel to this
and more critically, asserting the fundamental social and cultural value
of museums. These arguments ultimately have to made based on local circumstances
and needs rather than on the basis of state or industry policy. enabling
museums to address major community issues (such as reconciliation).
Leadership of museums such as the Living Museum of the West, which puts
its principles about community involvement and its vision into such tangible
action, is important. Connections between those involved professionally
and voluntarily in the industry, and between the many different types of
museums, are important. Museums Australia (Victoria) thanks and congratulates
the LMOW for the dedication and inspiration of its program and people over
the past year, and we wish it well through 2000.
Jessica Frean
Director
Museums Australia (Victoria) Inc.
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