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This book of essays explores concepts of museum, place, memory and landscape. It is inspired by the 2016 ICOM General Conference in Milan, the topic of which was Museums and Cultural Landscapes. The organizers of the Milan conference proclaimed that museums should become musei diffusi, extended museums to protect and interact with the cultural and natural heritage outside their walls. This idea was based on the Siena Charter of 2014, which proclaimed that "Involving the museums in the management and care of the cultural landscape means to develop their natural vocation, by extending their responsibility from their collections to the cultural heritage and surroundings: their local towns, villages and communities." How should museums react? And what relations do museum, big and small, have to place? Essays here examine aspects of the place of museums in an environment and the role the environment should or could play on museums. They deal with places made into museums, preserved landscapes and heritage sites in general – from a critical point of view; museums in place; place in museum, ecomuseum ideas. Some ask what role does the concept of collective memory and identity as well as the materiality of memory play in processes directed to making place a museum – or making a museum in a specific place? Others question the power of a museum to effect the desired changes. These papers address both museum/ musealization and place/landscape, however these terms are defined, with a sustainable future as the goal.

Thirty years ago, Kenneth Hudson, the grand old figure of the European museum world, said that there are chiefly two qualities that will be demanded of the museums in the future: pluralism of interest and the flexibility of imagination. Today, we cannot but admit that he was right. Even if the diversity of definitions of museum is bigger than ever, there is no doubt that modern museums want to live up to the expectations from new groups of visitors, from cultural policy and a changing society in general. Many museums have left the traditional role of embodying merely a national collective memory and have become a kind of commentators on the present; the museum of the 21st century is supposed to explain the complexity of the world and what it is to be human in this world – in a historical perspective.

Museums are changing from being institutions and presenting “institutional” knowledge, to multicultural platforms for negotiations about the past and a future that would be more sustainable. I would like to use the term process-museum, or museum-as-process, and change the term “taxonomy” – the classical art of classification – to “folksonomy”, a classification that includes user/visitor aggregation and distribution of knowledge. This means also that museums’ focus enlarges a bit from thing- and collection-orientation to visitor- and user-orientation.

Now, what is the role of museology in this? What is tradition in museology and where are we going from here? What do we do with the theory we have? How have we brought, and will bring, museological theory and epistemological developments into the museums and their practices? Museology has, for sure, been shaped and debated over the years and decades in interaction with new practices and social experimentation in museums. We have been exploring processes of museality and musealization, the means and ways in which a society selects, exhibits, interprets and administers the tangible and intangible products of culture, with a view to preserving them for posterity. According to Stránsky (just to mention one of the founders of European museology) the task of museology is not to understand reality (e.g. the material) but rather to understand the laws that are steering our actions in reality, in collection, preservation, registration and use. If we’d break down the “traditions” of museological thoughts and concepts from the last fifty years, we’d end up with quite a few definitions and approaches to what museology does, as well as what traditions it has. Here I will mention just a few perspectives. Museology has:

• a historical-institutional perspective, including research into the history, collections, exhibitions and artefact concepts of museums 12 Introduction

• a didactic perspective, focusing on young people, life-long learning and communication

• a communicative perspective, with a focus on strategic communication and exhibition planning in the museum world

• a social, economic and sociological perspective, including research into museum economy and social impact (e.g. community museums) as well as the impact of cultural heritage policy.

• a philosophical / existential perspective, museum as a phenomenon in modernity

• a technological perspective, with research into digital museology or cybermuseology

Apart from these perspectives, we have to deal with the great global diversity of cultures and traditions within heritage management, preservation, collecting and collective memory. Consequently, museology and museological research – in dealing with these traditions – has also developed differently in different parts of the world bringing different approaches to the field, geographically and culturally as well as regarding schools of museological thought.

Tradition, in this perspective, could be considered as «classical museology» confronted with critical museology socio-museology or the more modern “critical heritage studies”. In what respect does there exist anything like “classical” museology, and where? One needs only to mention that the field in East and North Europe is very large and encompasses not only museums but the cultural heritage at large, thus rendering new terms or concepts: mnemosophy or heritology (T. Sôla). E.g. in Sweden, there is actually no conflict or gap between museology/museums studies on the one side and/or heritage studies or critical heritage on the other.

All this is real achievement when it comes to development of critical thinking in relation to the phenomenon and development of museums. But – for the practitioner – have we been of any help? Some say that museology has long since become too conceptual – a “philosophie du muséal” – and is no longer dealing with “real things”, and that we have broken tradition with museum professionals and museum practice. That theory has left the professionals behind. This pinpoints – one more time – the old “conflict” between theory and practice, where some “practitioners” still think that museums need no theory, only classical “housekeeping skills” for museum management. So the question is: does museology reach the museums? Do museums feel they need museology, and if, how are the theories implemented and turned into practice?

The purpose of the Kyoto symposium is to discuss the links between past, present and future in cultural traditions and in museology and what theories we would need in the future to support a sustainable development of museums and heritage. We want to challenge tradition, without abandoning it, but present a critical view Introduction 13 of museological theory and museum practice in relation to traditions, and ponder in what directions museology and museums should be developed in the future.

The following sections of analysis were called for when planning the conference:

1. ICOFOM future / past roles: how do our members see ICOFOM’s theoretical development and role in the XXIst century / what are the expectations / illusions / possibilities? What is the position of museology in relation to the traditions of Museum Studies and the fast growing field of Critical Heritage Studies. Differences – similarities?

2. Museological theory, past and present, in relation to practice (in museums, exhibitions and heritage sites). How, in what way, do museums implement or use museological theory? Is museological theory useful, and if it is, in what respect?

3. Museological tradition versus global development and new technologies: what role does museology play and what positions does it take in relation to the rapid changes that are taking place, on the one hand in the museum world – e.g. will cyberspace out rule other spaces and materialities – and on the other hand in the world at large in an economic and political perspective (e.g. considering the return to extreme political positions and the “war” of information and knowledge?)

4. Notes on different forms of experimental museology; the role of museology in social experimentation in the development of new forms of museums that challenge tradition, or even reinterpret the concepts of traditional museums. Along what lines and where, do museums develop, for instance, into multicultural platforms for negotiations about the past and a future, thanks to New Museology/Social museology.

5. Museology and the Anthropocene – how can museology reduce the disastrous effect Man has on our planet Earth and our living conditions? How can museology help to bridge the gap between Mind and Matter – the gap that is the reason for the state of mankind right now – the belief that Man is superior to nature and all other creatures?! It is time to leave the conceptual ideas about discourses, “texts” and “objects as texts” and narrations behind, and realize that we and the material world are One whole; we have come into being together with the material world, not apart from it. We are buddies with the material; we wouldn’t otherwise be human; we would have achieved nothing without the help of material, tools and objects. We are all subordinated to entropy, death and extinction as well. So what impact should this insight bring to our dealing with museums, objects and collections, with a sustainable future in mind?

Many papers in this book, intended as material for discussions on and after the conference, deal with these specific questions while others use these as a takeoff for related perspectives on the future of traditions in museums and museology.

WHAT THIS IS ABOUT: Objects in museum collections that has ”escaped” the ordinary classification systems and registers: CATERGORIES OF INVESTIGATION: 1. Objects nobody knows what it is 2. Objects known, but have lost their reg. numbers, context or the provenience they once had 3. ”free findings” (”lösfynd”) and other oddities with no information or lost context, thus of no ”scientific” relevance. 4. Trash – broken items or deteriorated material.

Den här artikeln handlar om utställningsmediet och dess kommunikativa aspekter, sett inte i första hand som en Berättelse utan som ett tredimensionellt landskap, ett "territorium" belamrat med materiella ting (föremål, montrar) och andra markörer för vår uppmärksamhet. Jag undersöker hur platsspecifik rumslighet och vårt "geografiska förnuft" samverkar med våra kroppars sinnen och tankar och därmed vårt sätt att orientera oss i detta landskap. Jag diskuterar vidare tingens roll i det hela och hur våra mycket komplexa, både kroppsliga och mentala relationer till tingen och rummet påverkar den kommunikativa situationen i en utställning. Kontentan är att den vanliga föreställningen om att föremålen tillsammans bildar en "berättelse" egentligen är helt felaktig.

This paper will discuss some ideas on learning and "understanding" in a communicative process, particularly attached to objects in a museum setting. I will analyse our object relations and the idea of engagement, participation and collaboration in museums. A starting point is, on the one hand, today's individualization of society, with self-performative action as a result. On the other hand there is a "radical group-forming" tendency that goes along with new communication technologies that has created an "architecture" of participation. Museums have responded to these new tendencies in society in a variety of ways. I will bring up some hermeneutical aspects to the "visitor business" and "learning" and point out the social and phenomenological origin of identity, thought and cognition. I will take a look at the identity of the "radical" individual on the one hand and of the institution on the other, and point at out some unsolved museological and paradigmatic problems as forin the interaction between these two. Finally, I will discuss the very much overlooked question how institutions think, and work?

The study of the museum visitor has undergone radical transformation. Each author here has asked unfamiliar questions and responded with fresh answers. Some of these questions involve the visitor's identity, what she brings to her museum experience. Can we gain entry into this experience? Does more technology really increase access to the objects themselves? Others probe the very nature of museum going and exhibition making, demanding that we reexamine the traditional exhibition to reposition the visitor and her meaning-making at the centre. The volume provokes imaginative research and encourages new conclusions.

Museology has in most parts of the world been, and still is, perceived as a theory of the museum institution itself; the museum as social phenomenon; the museum’s role in society and learning, museum collections and management, etcetera. Parallel to this, particularly in East European countries, museology early came to cover much more. The concept grew larger and included other institutions from the field of heritage, living history and science. Today the concept of museology in these countries covers almost everything that has to do with man’s dealing with time, history, immaterial and material heritage, from large geographical eco-museums and heritage sites to the smallest private enterprise. The chair of museology at Umeå university, Sweden (courses started in 1981 but became a professorship in 1997), defines museology in this very broad sense. Our theoretical standpoint today is  also more critical and can be seen as a parallel to the emerging field of Critical Heritage.

In this paper I will explore the development of museology in Scandinavia and Finland and its early influences from East Europe and France. I will also ponder the seemingly deep “iron curtain” between the Anglo-Saxon and the German-French speaking world of museological or museum research.

In conclusion I will draw up some lines for the development of museology in order to create theoretical resources for museums and heritage enterprises to adapt in their work for a more sustainable future. Some seriously new lines of thinking are needed here.

It seems that nothing that occurs in our society today may pass untouched by the hand of preservation, which treats every happening as a past in becoming. If preservation is a product of modernity, as I will argue, so is our multifaceted and complicated relationship to objects – our obsessive desire of consuming goods.

Museums are bulging under the pressure of their enormous collections. Museum collection and heritage management require ever more funds; this has become a major political issue in the post-modern society. Experts together with politicians governed by economic rationalities, battle with the issue of what to preserve, and what to let go. At the same time, in another realm of reality, we are producing billions of tons of trash and refuse every year – material stuff, of which a large part ends up in the oceans, or in enormous landfills all over the world, tightly packed and, without question, very well preserved for coming generations of archaeologists to dig up.

Museology is supposed to study – among other things – man's "specific relation" to reality, particularly the material reality, and to offer guidance in how to cope with heritage in the future. This paper presents a post-humanist approach to museums and preservation at the one end and our everyday material discards and destruction of value at the other.

Métamorphose des valeurs dans la bataille entre préservation et laisser-aller

Il semble que rien de ce qui se produit dans notre société d'aujourd'hui ne peut être laissé sans passer par la préservation , envisageant chaque événement comme un passé en devenir. Si la préservation est un produit de la modernité, comme je le soutiendrai, il en va de même de notre relation multifacettes avec les objets. Les musées sont pleins à craquer sous la pression de leurs énormes collections. Experts et politiciens, régis par la rationalité économique, bataillent avec la question de ce qu'il faut conserver et ce qu'il faut laisser aller. Dans le même temps, dans un autre domaine de la réalité, nous produisons des milliards de tonnes de déchets dont une grande partie se retrouve dans les océans ou dans d'énormes décharges disséminées dans le monde entier, sans aucun doute très bien conservées pour les générations à venir afin que des archéologues puissent les déterrer. La muséologie est censée étudier la "relation spécifique" de l'homme à la réalité, en particulier la réalité matérielle, et offrir des conseils sur la façon de faire face au patrimoine du futur. Cet article présente une approche post-humaniste d’une part sur les musées et la préservation et d’autre part sur nos rejets quotidiens et la destruction de valeur.

Under museernas vårmöte i Umeå i april anordnade UEForum ett seminarium om utställningsmediet. En av deltagarna var Kerstin Smeds, professor i museologi. Här publicerar vi hennes anförande där hon diskuterar tre sidor av utställningsmediet: 1) Utställningen som ”text”, 2) Texter i utställningar och 3) Berättelsens dilemma.