Volume 62 Number 4 October 2019
EDITORIAL
A Discomforting Definition of Museum
JOHN FRASER
I started this editorial at the 25th Interna-
tional Council of Museums (ICOM) meeting
in Kyoto where delegates found themselves
embroiled in redefining what constitutes a
museum. The proposed definition was pre-
sented in a December 2018 report by the
Museum Definition, Prospects and Potentials
(MDPP) committee, to the ICOM Executive
Board. That report represented many years of
input from a vast network of ICOM commit-
tees. The final “consensus position” pushed at
the edges of past practice to suggest a more acti-
vist role of museums as contributors to their cul-
tures, redressing past wrongs, and aspiring to
leadership for a more inclusive and environmen-
tally responsible global culture. The updated
definition built on the last ICOM definition
formally adopted in August, 2007 by ICOM’s
22nd General Assembly in Austria. The 2007
version stated that:
“A museum is a non-profit, permanent
institution in the service of society and its
development, open to the public, which
acquires, conserves, researches, communicates
and exhibits the tangible and intangible her-
itage of humanity and its environment for the
purposes of education, study and enjoyment.”
(ICOM 2019).
I bold some text to suggest that the defini-
tion contains specific terms that still troubling
twelve years after publication, primarily because
John Fraser, Editor (johnf@knology.org) is President & CEO of Knology, a New York based social science
research institute, and the 2019–2020 Past President of the Society for Environmental, Population, & Conserva-
tion Psychology, Division 34 of the American Psychological Association.
© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
these terms are not true for all types of muse-
ums. Rather than revisit those troubles, this edi-
torial explores the new definition as a migration
further into the weeds of restricting the term
museum. This new definition seems to have
become more expansive, encompassing more
than two paragraphs, and prescribing even more
specific social impacts and outcomes. That new
two paragraph definition reads:
Museums are democratising, inclusive
and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue
about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging
and addressing the conflicts and challenges of
the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in
trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for
future generations and guarantee equal rights
and equal access to heritage for all people.
Museums are not for profit. They are par-
ticipatory and transparent, and work in active
partnership with and for diverse communities to
collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and
enhance understandings of the world, aiming to
contribute to human dignity and social justice,
global equality and planetary wellbeing. (ICOM
2019)
As delegates contemplated the definition of
museums in the halls and at events, the panel
program seemed to focus on topics that gener-
ated a fair bit of cultural discomfort with
authority and practice. The presentations
started with a claim that museums are servants
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of shared memory, and provide the platform for
contemplation of our past with a view to the
future. But that discourse was not represented
by the voices that sought to redefine museum.
Rather, the dialogue suggests that the museum
itself is defined as a tool for promoting specific
social values. While I may not disagree with
these values, the resurgence of fascism, intoler-
ance, and human trafficking of displaced people
are all evidence that the aspirational definition
cannot be easily reconciled with how museums
are part of our current political world. More-
over, it suggests a thin veneer of social accept-
ability as an apology for the persistent use of
museums in service of a political elite.
I would argue that this aspirational defini-
tion, while laudable from a civil rights perspec-
tive, does not acknowledge that many museums
are subject to the power of the purse. They work
within the constraints of their governance.
Many museum professionals chafe at the idea
that their collections and histories are emblem-
atic of an imperialist hegemony. But we must
acknowledge that the museum form can be used
for purposes that this definition seeks to
exclude. There remain museums that are dedi-
cated to theological pursuits that deny human
rights to a class of individuals. I receive press
releases regularly from museums that do not
have a passing interest in subject matter that
may have consequential influence on human
dignity, equality, or planetary well-being. These
places work within the form and functions of
what the public calls a museum, but more likely
to reinforce the values and beliefs of their pub-
lics than fulfill the goals imagined by the ICOM
definition.
To accept this new prescription leads one to
ask if the large and well-resourced art museums
that seldom draw audience members from low
socio-economic status groups, would meet the
social prescription at the heart of this definition.
502
If a museum is only used by a select class of peo-
ple or their admission costs outstrip the capacity
of a local group, can they really be considered
inclusive? Will the presence of these institutions
in the ICOM community bend the definition
beyond utility? What of the museums that oper-
ate on behalf of their national governments to
perpetuate the views of the dominant culture at
the expense of any minority? Is this definition
intended to winnow the ranks or status of some
museums in the international community?
I fully ascribe to the belief that museums
can advance inclusivity and critical civic dia-
logue. I aspire to see all museums working to
create a better world. The definitional problem,
however, is to assume valance or purpose rather
than what constitutes the museum form for
good or bad. The new ICOM platform pro-
poses conformance with a set of universal values
that may be easily co-opted to winnow the field.
Were we to consider how museums operated in
the past, with their own assumptions about citi-
zenship and civil rights, quite literally acting as
extension of an acquisitive cultural imperialism,
shouldn’t museums be more circumspect in our
assumptions today? I suggest that the new defi-
nition is an over-reach that undermines the
understanding of the affordances of the form or
how the form might be misused but still consti-
tute a museum.
More importantly, the new definition may
be so prescriptive as to fall by the wayside as a
meaningless platitude based on the very actions
of the major institutions who claim to support
ICOM.
From a purely economics perspective, I am
discomforted by the idea that a museum must
be a not-for-profit. Governments are not profit-
making entities, but they are anything but non-
profits. Government operated or funded muse-
ums work within the confines of the prevailing
political winds. Government patronage restricts
Editorial: A Discomforting Definition of Museum

the work of museum professionals to the values
imposed by their public masters.
In the case of fascist regimes, monarchies,
or some religious organizations, we see a great
deal of evidence that the museum form can be
readily employed to support doctrine, propa-
ganda, exclusion, vilification, and misinforma-
tion. These institutions can present the grand
works of a cultural history and celebrate xeno-
phobic world views at the same time. There are
museums that laud the science and engineering
behind the global petroleum industry, a system
we now understand to be the basis of our climate
crisis. These uses of museums in service of a
story told of our culture for public consumption
is a museological pursuit, whether our interna-
tional community finds the activities of their
owners, curators, and enablers repugnant or
laudable. These institutions are part of our fam-
ily, and we must carry that burden and shame
when we define what a museum is.
One would argue that the entire sentence
declaring that museums are not for profit is a
self-limiting critique of the sector’s inability to
purposefully achieve benefit. While my voice as
editor of this journal has little import in the
political machinations of ICOM, I would argue
that society will reap profits from the active
work to promote an inclusive society or the work
to restore the nature on which all life depends.
The economics of how they do this work is irrel-
evant.
More practically, what do we call a museum
that meets all other criteria of the definition but
also generates profit of a single Yen? What do
we call a government museum whose revenues
are redirected for non-museum purposes like
the funding of road repair or the embellishment
of a presidential palace? If a national museum
generates funding to support democratic elec-
tions in a formerly totalitarian state, do we deny
them the right to call their exhibitions and
John Fraser
Volume 62 Number 4 October 2019
buildings a museum based only on their use of a
cultural institution to fund non-museum work?
While many delegates at the ICOM con-
ference supported the new definition as an easily
ratified bit of international bureaucracy, it also
seemed that there was a rush to gather all of the
world’s contemporary problems into one large
bucket and claim that museums can solve these
issues. We heard great lauding of the nobility of
the museum enterprise as an interventionist
entity, supported by evidence of those who have
used the museum form to catalyze change in
their communities. But I was left wondering if
the definition reached beyond its bounds to
ascribe specific use of a form rather than the
form itself.
It appeared that my discomfort was shared
by others. Behind the scenes drama could not
be held in check. After witnessing a glowing
presentation offering irrefutable examples of
museums whose pursuits illustrate the highest
values of the new definition, the only contrary
mention allowed in the presentation was lim-
ited to a single pre-planned dissent afforded
only a few short minutes and not from a mem-
ber of the panel. That remark expressed trepi-
dation about the definition as a consensus
statement by twenty-two ICOM committees.
These concerns, raised by Brazilian scholar
Bruno Brulon Soares, left me feeling that the
formal presentation was hastily convened pro-
paganda to support a rubber stamp vote. I was
left feeling that an affirmative vote by a bare
majority would reflect an imperialism that the
definition sought to overcome.
At another session, I was heartened by
Sarah Sutton’s presentation of the We Are Still
In movement in the USA, a collective of state
and non-governmental entities who have agreed
to fulfill the American commitments to the
COP21 Paris Agreement irrespective of their
federal government’s withdrawl. Thanks to that
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movement, there is a groundswell of museums
dedicating their practice to addressing our glo-
bal climate crisis. That result suggests that these
museums are examples of institutions that work
within the new definition. But the number of
signatories remains a small portion of the
museum sector in the USA. That trepidation by
the majority demonstrates that the museum
definition cannot require this purpose, it is only
an example of how the form can be used. It is as
if we define a cup because it is designed to hold
soup or tea, but pretend it is no longer a cup
when it holds some old screws or fond memories
of our grandmother.
The contentious sessions on repatriation,
reparation, and restorative justice for those
whose cultures were appropriated by well-in-
tentioned imperialists of past generations also
demonstrated that we cannot ask the British
Museum or the Louvre to cease and desist from
calling themselves museums. Bonita Bennett’s
work with the District Six Museum in South
Africa, offered insight into what a museum is
versus what a museum can choose to be. That
example shows that the museum form is well
suited to working with the [specific local] memo-
ries of communities who suffered from generations
of oppression can contribute meaningfully to the
cultural reconstruction and restitution. Excellence
in the use of the form for civil rights. Compar-
ing that museum’s work to the British Museum
and the Louvre demonstrates that we should
never construe social action as the sole use of
that type of public or private institution, even if
the District Six museum is guiding some muse-
ums toward clarity in social purpose.
More disturbing, however, were the ses-
sions on restitution, repatriation, reconciliation,
and healing. Representatives of former colonial
nations continue to maintain policies that the
plunder of prior eras is their right. We continue
to see these institutions holding on to the
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cultural assets of their former colonies and con-
quests. But the defense of their retention of the
spoils of conquest, however seemed distant from
the more important work involved in reconcilia-
tion and healing, the foundations of a future
peace. The museum definition, unfortunately,
cannot ignore past complicity and perpetuation
of oppression and harm. When the definition
claims that museums contribute to human dig-
nity, it hides uncomfortable truths about the
source of their collections.
I arrived at the meeting looking forward to
a robust discussion of what constitutes the con-
temporary museum. I was left to wonder why it
is important to require museums to be about the
global environmental crisis, the solution to
imperialism, or even to question whether one
museum’s income model might exclude it from
being part of our global enterprise.
Over the past decade and a half, we’ve
sought out papers for this journal that engage
more actively in the societal issues of our time.
Unfortunately, the ICOM definition seems
freighted with indefensible valence, values that
overstep what a museum is, and lays claim to a
specific view of what a museum is required to
be. For the next generation, the ICOM com-
munity is seeking to be held to an exhaustive set
of prescriptions rather than a purposefully clear
and simple description of a type of social enter-
prise. For me, the committee has offered useful
recommendations for civic action that fit well
with the museum form, but those purposes
should not be construed to be a definition of
what museums are. END
REFERENCES
ICOM. 2019. Museum Definition; Creating a new
museum definition – the backbone of ICOM.
Accessed September 30, 2019. Retrieved from
https://icom.museum/en/activities/standards-
guidelines/museum-definition/
Editorial: A Discomforting Definition of Museum