Can you recall your first visit to a museum? Your first exposure to great art? Or, perhaps, a museum visit or a work of art that turned you into an art-lover? Or an artist? What are your museum memories?
Tomorrow is International Museum Day, an annual event created by ICOM, the International Council of Museums that has been around since 1977. This year, ICOM says that more than 30,000 museums in about 100 countries will take part. And the Association of Art Museum Directors, meanwhile, calculates that about 100 American art museums will participate, often by reducing admission rates or offering special programs. (Not everything takes place tomorrow, though — some museums shift the day to make it more convenient.)
This year, ICOM has chosen the theme “museums and memory” in an attempt to prompt museums to explore how they help preserve individual and collective memory. As ICOM puts it:
Through the objects they store, museums collect stories and convey the memory of our communities. These objects are the expressions of our natural and cultural heritage. Many of them are fragile, some endangered and they need special care and conservation. International Museum Day 2011 will be an occasion for visitors to discover and rediscover individual and collective memory.
Objects, in other words, can tell a story. But it’s also broader than that, which is what prompted my questions above. Think about it… and think about what your museum means to your community: a source of pride, a unifying factor, or — I hope not — a struggling institution?
Tomorrow night, I will be at the Toledo Art Museum (above), moderating a panel on these questions and more. Toledo’s creative director Brian Kennedy (at right)has gathered the directors of two other great Midwest museums to be on the program and, to add to the international aspect of the day, all three were born overseas: David Franklin, the Canadian head of the Cleveland Museum of Art; Graham Beal, the British director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Kennedy himself, who is Irish.
It starts at 6 p.m. If you’re in the neighborhood, come. And come early to visit the museum’s renowned collection, too.
UPDATED: The program is now posted online.