Rethinking of Museums’ Core Value and Regional Heritage in Asia-Pacific

In the Japan-Korea meeting of Professionals, held in February 2008, Ms. In-kyung Chang, the Chairperson of ICOM-ASPAC, suggested that the meetings of ICOM-ASPAC should provide opportunities to discuss about the value of the museums for Asia-Pacific regions.

It is important to construct the museum community by mutual exchange of information not only within museums in Japan but also with other foreign museums and to contribute to the society by these activities. These requests meet with the theme of “Museum and Harmonious Society” of General Conference in Shanghai in 2010 and also with the theme: “Core Values and Social Responsibilities of Museums in the 21 century”, presented in theNingbo Forum.

Under such circumstances, discussions of Mr. Masamine Sasaki, Chairperson of ICOM-Japan, Ms. In-kyung Chang, the Chairperson of ICOM-ASPAC and Japanese Association of Museums, led us to the agreement that the main theme of the conference in Japan in 2009 will be “Rethinking of Museums' Core Value and Regional Heritage”.

Session1: Regional Heritage in Asia-Pacific

There are many regional heritages including cultural and natural heritages in Asia-Pacific. However, many of those regional heritages are not adequately conserved, nor appropriately utilized. Museums are expected to contribute to conservation of the regional heritages, but some of them would not be ready to be engaged in such activities because of their inadequate infrastructure or capacities. If the regional heritages would be opened as tourism resources to the general public in the museums, the visitors to the museums would be disappointed to see inadequate managements of the regional heritages and it would end up with failure of succession of the regional heritage to next generations. In this session, we would like to focus on cultural heritages and discuss the role of cultural heritages in Asia-Pacific region and the role of museums that conserve and utilize such heritages.

Session2: Network Building for Museum Information in Asia-Pacific

Due to the rapid economic growth of Asia-Pacific regions, many issues, such as deterioration of natural environment and the loss of biodiversity, are arising. Considering this situation, it is important for museums to disseminate information on collections through the internet. Although there are some natural history museums in Asia-Pacific region, making digitized records of collections available to the public in their local languages and English. However, many museums in the region are still behind in terms of database and digitization of museum information. This session will provide the participants with chances to discuss how we can improve this situation and how we can share information between museums. Furthermore, this session is expected to stimulate discussions on networks for museums information terms of collection database and dissemination of digitized museum information.

Session3: Human Resources Development for “Code of Ethics”

in Asia-Pacific

Human resources development of museum experts and curators is a global issue. Museum experts are expected to understand and follow “Code of Ethics”. However, unless adequate training systems in countries, it is practically impossible to think about human resources development for code of ethics. In this session, we will discuss how we can implement such human resources development in Asia-Pacific region. A focus will be put on the means and prerequisites for the implementation, as well as ways of multinational cooperation for human resources development in order to establish code of ethics.