ABSTRACT

What is a museum? Though seemingly obvious, the answer to this question has eluded the international museum sector since a controversial redraft of the official definition, put forward by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in 2019, was dramatically rejected by its own membership. As deliberations about what constitutes a museum continue ahead of ICOM’s next General Conference in 2022, this article provides a quantitative content analysis of 269 definition proposals submitted by ICOM’s international membership during the 2019 consultation phase, in order to evaluate how closely the wording of the eventual proposed definition mirrored the priorities of ICOM’s stakeholder base. The research finds that contributors favoured the content of the standing ICOM definition over terms and concepts that characterised the proposed revision. In the light of these findings, the article proposes ways in which ICOM can improve its consultation processes in order to more faithfully gauge the perspectives of its constituents ahead of the 2022 conference.

摘要

什么是博物馆？尽管看似显而易见，但自从国际博物馆理事会 (ICOM) 于 2019 年提出的官方定义的有争议的重新起草被其成员强烈拒绝以来，这个问题的答案一直困扰着国际博物馆部门。在 2022 年 ICOM 下一届大会之前，关于博物馆构成的讨论仍在继续，本文对 ICOM 国际会员在 2019 年咨询阶段提交的 269 项定义提案进行了定量内容分析，以评估最终提案的措辞与提议的定义反映了 ICOM 利益相关者群体的优先事项。研究发现，贡献者更喜欢 ICOM 常设定义的内容，而不是拟议修订的术语和概念。