Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse.
- from James Joyce's ‘Ulysses’, an account of one person in one place on one day, 16 June 1904, published 2 February 1922.
Today, 27 August 2019, we spotlight the following HYPERALLERGIC editorial and accompanying article about re/defining The Museum.
The final para of the HYPERALLERGIC article :
August 27, 2019
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Letter from the Editor:
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) released a new definition of "museum" this month, and not everyone is happy. Danish curator Jette Sandahl, who lead ICOM’s commission on the new definition, suggested, among other things:
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 participatory 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.
Some immediately considered the definition too ideological, but it raises bigger questions as to whether we actually have a working definition for the institutions that are the foundation of the art world. And is defining them even possible nowadays?
I think the question of what a museum is today is just as complicated as defining what art can be. We're more likely to recognize when something isn't a museum (or art) rather than when it actually is. In an era of more private vanity museums than ever, ersatz corporate entities designed for selfie takers (Museum of Ice Cream, etc.), and the push toward expensive spectacles that require outside funding, the meaning of museum is changing.
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In April, ICOM began publishing a crowdsourced list of new museum definitions from around the world. Currently, there are 269 entries on their website from countries including Spain, France, Japan, Cameroon, and Iran. The proposed definition, however, was not chosen from any of these submissions but was picked internally by Sandhal’s commission. Voting for the new definition will be held at the organization’s Extraordinary General Assembly in Kyoto, Japan, on September 7.
Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl after Blake's buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
- from James Joyce's ‘Ulysses’
At the International Council Of Museums website
page headed Museum Definition : Creating a new museum definition – the backbone of ICOM, this is the Museum image that has ICOM provided :
a grid of Right Angles in shades of white/ similar-sized rectangles of regard floating unsupported on walls/ NO PEOPLE or other living beings. Off to The Amuseum with that lot.
page headed Museum Definition : Creating a new museum definition – the backbone of ICOM, this is the Museum image that has ICOM provided :
a grid of Right Angles in shades of white/ similar-sized rectangles of regard floating unsupported on walls/ NO PEOPLE or other living beings. Off to The Amuseum with that lot.
Towards Amuseum(s) of Regard
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA
