ICME News 45 - October 2006
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ICME Ethnography - Ethnographie - EtnografiaInternational Committee for Museums of Ethnography - ICOM/ICME http://icme.icom.museumContents:
1. WORDS FROM THE PRESIDENT
Focus of the presented papers included analysis of museum-community relations from various levels, historical overviews of ICME during the last 60 years, case studies of museum collaboration with community groups as well as of community groups in the creation of their own museums, the problems of digital collections, the 'agency' of objects, the pedagogy of recollection and many other points. Some of these papers are already available for downloading from the ICME web site, and several others will be online shortly. The excursions during the conference and the post conference tour included contact with groups and institutions that the uninitiated would never have discovered on their own. A selection of photos has been placed on the ICME web site. ICME member Leif Pareli has also put quite a few of his own pictures from the conference and post-conference tour on his personal website at http://home.online.no/~pareli/Florida/florida1.html All in all, I wish to thank our local organizer - ICME secretary Annette Fromm - for putting together such an exciting and varied program! The ICME board held its annual meeting during the conference - partly 'virtually' using a SKYPE connection to include absent members.
The ICME board also discussed an invitation from ICOM Israel and the Isaac Kaplan Old Yishuv Court Museum in Jerusalem for collaboration on a conference in 2008. The board looked favorably on this invitation, and look forward towards discussing the possibilities further. The board reiterated its support for continued ICME activities tied to Intangible Heritage and Intellectual Property. One example discussed during the meeting was in response to an enquiry by ICOM Legal Affairs Committee Chairman Patrick Boylan. Professor Boylan asked for ideas on how ICOM might study the implementation of the 2003 UNESCO Convention on the Intangible Heritage. www.unesco.org/culture/ich_convention/ Patrick Boylan wrote: "One thing that ICME in particular could do to help with this is to find out what is happening at the national level. What progress is being made in each country in trying to persuade governments to adopt the Convention, and also what arrangements are being made for designating the national body or bodies to take the lead in relation to the implementation of the Convention? In some cases it may be that new national organisations will be created for this, but there is no reason why governments should not designate existing organisations working in the field, such as national and regional ethnographical museums to take on this role." I know that several ICME members already sit on national boards for creating guidelines for Intangible Heritage in their respective countries. While these have been chosen because of their professional expertise - not because of their membership in ICOM or ICME - their participation in a network of museum professionals who have been discussing these problems the last several years has been important in building up their knowledge on the subject. I also believe that Professor Boylan is correct that - as a worldwide network tied to ethnographic museums - ICME could be suited to the task of collecting information on the status of the convention in various countries, as well as a pressure group for encouraging it's implementation. I invite feedback from ICME members on this. Best regards,
(Editors note: The following paper, which was presented at the Miami conference in July 2006, is available together with other presentations at http://icme.icom.museum) 2. THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN: JOURNEYS IN THE POST-COLONIAL WORLDBy W. Richard West, Jr.
Fifteen years ago, when I started in this position, my first boss at the Smithsonian, former Secretary Robert McCormick Adams, urged that the Museum be built on recognition of "the vitality and the self-determination of Native American voices." He challenged us to "move decisively from the older image of the museum as a temple with its superior, self-governing priesthood." Dr. Adams's visionary words remain guideposts for how we operate every day on the National Mall. More recently, a good friend, the former head of a federal arts and humanities agency, led a number of distinguished visitors on a tour of the new Museum. Afterwards, one of his guests - a former trustee at one of America's renowned art museums - exclaimed in exasperation, "I do not like this museum! It is not a collector's museum. Something else is going on here." Both Bob Adams and the art-museum trustee have the NMAI pegged spot on: something else is, indeed, going on here. I do not claim a monopoly on our approach, which puts Native voices in charge of our narratives. Over the past decade and a half, a number of museums have been moving in this same direction. But none has done it at the NMAI's level of magnitude, on the National Mall before approximately 2 million annual visitors. I would like to start today with a discussion of the NMAI in more conventional museum terms, as a place that holds a hemispheric treasure of 800,000 objects, and that interprets those collections for the public. But I also want to be clear as to how the curatorial process at the NMAI has been refashioned along lines that have found increasing acceptance in museums and among anthropologists and art historians. Then, I would like to discuss how this recalibration makes possible the NMAI's transcending historical definitions of what museums do. I want to describe how these places we know as "cultural destinations" also can be genuine civic spaces of broad public import. First, let me turn to some fundamentals. The NMAI does not refer only to the past history of Native Americans. Rather, it is an institution of living cultures, representing peoples from South America to the Arctic Circle. As the frustrated art- museum trustee observed, the NMAI is not simply a "palace of collections." It aspires to go beyond the artful presentation of objects, to represent and interpret the ideas, peoples, and communities that surround those collections. Roger Kennedy, Director Emeritus of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, saw matters precisely in these terms when he wrote that NMAI should be "a living Indians' museum, presenting . . . certain valuable truths about living Native persons [who have] a set of experiences special to them, but important to the rest of us [as well]." This integration of living Native peoples and their communities with their objects, and the elevation of the Native voice in those objects' interpretation, is no random intellectual occurrence, but our chosen methodology. Native peoples do not divide their heritage between what curators and anthropologists have called "tangible" and "intangible" cultural heritage. We see both as connected and fully integrated in our lives. From a Native standpoint, the object itself may be less important than the processes leading to its creation. It is those aspects of experience - traditions, songs, spiritual beliefs, and ritual and ceremonial practices ?-that speak to the wholeness of living Native cultures. In the words of my Smithsonian colleague Richard Kurin, Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, scholars and curators must "recognize thatknowledge exists in homes, villages, slums, out in the fields, in factories and social halls, as well as in the halls of academia and in their museums." This scholarship of inclusion is not without implications. To begin with, exhibitions may look quite different. Australian archeologist Claire Smith addresses this in her essay, "The National Museum of the American Indian: Decolonising the Museum": "Deriving from Indigenous conceptual readings of the world, the classificatory systems of the NMAI reveal a holistic concern with the relationships between plants, animals, humans and places, as well as between past and present. This is contrary to non-Indigenous classification systems. . . ." The second implication of inclusion has an even greater impact, for it signals an important shift in power. As Claire Smith observes: In deciding to create a museum in which Native Americans
tell their own stories, unfettered by the interpretive lens of the
dominant society, the NMAI has realized its potential to provide
unprecedented richness in interpretation and to offer rare
insights into the lives of Native peoples. . . . [N]ew vistas,
directed by Indigenous eyes, are opened to the public. Such fundamental changes are not taken lightly by more mainstream critics. Reviewing our opening, a New York Times writer objected to NMAI's moving away from the "museum as a temple with its superior, self-governing priesthood" and to our making objects available to tribes "for ritual use," believing this to be evidence of a "studious avoidance of scholarship." And he voices disdain for the choices made by the Tohono O'odham community of Arizona in one of our opening exhibitions. In response, let me again quote Roger Kennedy: If he had a sense of humor, a critic of this sort might be worth attending even though tone-deaf to the numinous, and color-blind to the symbolic. But what can you do with someone who can write with indignation of the Tohono O'odham's response when 'they were asked to present 10 crucial moments in this history,' and chose, as their first, 'Birds teach people to call for rain,' and as their last 'in the year 2000, a desert walk for health'? The Tohono O'odham refused to be talked down to. Their little parable says with a smile, 'We will listen to the elders who have earned our respect, but we will not be patronized by puppies.' I'm with them. And so am I. As Director of the NMAI, I have an ethical and intellectual commitment to the fundamental proposition that Native peoples possess authoritative knowledge about their cultures, past and present. Their presence provides the museum's 2 million annual visitors with new sources of learning, new scholarship and insight into Native peoples and cultures. In the past two decades, anthropological thinking has moved well beyond the notion of Native "informants" to one that embraces collaborative relationships with Native peoples. These new partnerships reveal nuances of culture and levels of knowledge unavailable a generation ago. Clearly, there are multiple paths to interpretive legitimacy. All I ask is that those of us who labor to develop new approaches grounded in Native communities be granted the same respect as other truth-seekers. This approach takes us beyond the fundamental nature of the institution as a "museum." As I watched some 30,000 Native people from all over the Americas at the Museum's opening, I had a powerful sense that I was experiencing something far more significant than the opening of a dazzling new gem in the Smithsonian's illustrious crown. The inauguration of the National Museum of the American Indian in the heart of the nation's capital acknowledged at last the centrality of an entire set of peoples and cultures in the heritage of every one of the tens of thousands of people in attendance on that memorable day ?-Native and non-Native alike. Viewed in this light, the NMAI possesses the potential to be more than a "museum." We have learned that you cannot put culture in a cabinet. You can put cultural objects in cabinets, vitrines, and exhibitions, but to truly reveal the vitality of Native cultures, you need to open up the intellectual and psychic space. At the NMAI a quite extraordinary array of Native cultural expression starts to suggest the ways in which the museum has the capacity to become a larger social and civic space. Powwows, films, lectures, performances by leading Native musicians, readings by some of the creative powerhouses of Indian literature, provocative symposia, cutting- edge - these all create a cultural environment within the museum where Native peoples can bring their broad and deep experience, past and present, to a multitude of discussions regarding indigenous cultures. Likewise, our permanent exhibitions offer clues to these intentions. The exhibitions address subjects as variant as cosmology, casino operations, health issues,urban Indian life, and hunting and fishing rights. They showcase objects, of course, thousands of them, but broad ideas and themes, Native peoples themselves, and the role of communities hold equal sway. Earlier this fall, representatives of the Gwich'in Nation of
Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada quite literally set up a day
camp across Maryland Avenue from the museum, where they lobbied
passersby about the Gwich'in Nation's staunch opposition, on
religious and cultural grounds, to legislation then pending in the
Congress concerning the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I applaud
their choice of a protest site, and, in some ways, what I
appreciate most - perhaps somewhat ironically ironically - is that
they were not invited. The Gwich'in chose us as the site to unfold
what I regard a potent formula for transformation: the passionate
expression of profound aspiration. For what links this political
event and our exhibitions and programs is that both intend to
promote a civic discourse regarding Native peoples and cultures
that transcends historical definitions of a "museum." Community museums look the least like museums and are often
named cultural or community centers. They are often a mixed-use
space of affiliated organizations and functions, with a blend of
meeting spaces, gathering spaces and stages, offices, food
service, and teaching spaces. . . . I would not want to stretch the analogy too far, but envision, as I have, the National Museum of the American Indian as, in important respects, a community institution relating to Native peoples of the Americas that happens to sit squarely on the National Mall. It is not only a place where others can learn about Native history, cultures, and communities. It assumes a broader social and civic commitment to support those communities, through language preservation and repatriation, for example, into a sound cultural future. Equally key, the NMAI serves as an important national forum where individuals and communities can address important, timely, and sometimes controversial issues regarding Native peoples. And it does so at a time when alternate civic forums that historically have been places of social and political discourse appear to be in a state of collapse in the United States. Smithsonian Folklife's Richard Kurin notes that "[T]here
are many signs and cases worldwide where museums have come forward
to take on this larger, more expansive task." Indeed, museums
have, in our staffs of cultural specialists and our historic
mission to disseminate knowledge, what Richard calls a "toolkit"
for serving the larger social purpose. This potential for far
broader civic engagement, so embedded in the NMAI in theory and
practice, is our real offering to museum theory of the 21st
century. As a national museum charting new territory, the NMAI is leading a nation down a path of understanding and reconciliation. Museums shape our sense of historical memory, and national museums shape our sense of national identity. . . . Through being consciously shaped by the classification systems, worldviews and philosophies of its Indigenous constituency, this new national museum is claiming moral territory for Indigenous peoples, in the process reversing the impact of colonialism and asserting the unique place of Native peoples - past, present, and future - of the Americas. With humility and with the knowledge that much always remains to be done, I take pride in the accomplishments to date of this physical and spiritual Native marker on America's National Mall. We will continue to strive to invoke the Native voice in all aspects of the Museum, because we believe that the Native voice brings new knowledge and perspectives to learning about the first citizens of the Western Hemisphere, and because we have an abiding faith in its authority to limn the peoples, lives, and cultures of Native America. But we will also reach beyond earlier conceptions of museums to address, within the context of Native America, the broader civic and social responsibilities that will allow these institutions to have far greater impact in the 21st century than they did in the 20th. Thank you very much for your kind attention. W. Richard West, Jr.
3. GERMANS IN HUNGARY - HUNGARIANS IN GERMANY. EUROPEAN COURSES OF LIFE. AN EXHIBITION CROSSING BORDERS (2006/2007)By Dr Beate WildWhat is it like - life between two countries, between two languages? Wandering between two worlds, switching between two cultures. Is it a big chance or is it a big challenge? What does it mean to the individual? Where is one at home? Is one a stranger in both countries? Does one search for one's identity, lost between two different social and political systems? Within the Hungarian Cultural Year celebrated in Germany in 2006, seven Hungarian and German museums and institutes have organized a mutual exhibition, focussing on the connections between Hungary and Germany in the course of time. These connections have grown stronger during the last centuries due to political, economic and social developments. The exhibition, though, does not represent the abstract nation-state concept in the course of one thousand years of history, but it shows the complex relationship between peoples, visualized by concrete biographies. There is the story of a Hungarian princess (St. Elisabeth), who was engaged to a German prince and had to leave her country at the age of four. There is the story of a German maid who stole the Hungarian crown to make sure that the successor to the Hungarian throne be the son of her queen. There are stories of craftsmen, industrialists, scientists, artists, who left their country to start a new life in the other country. They all worked out their own strategies to overcome the personal conflict resulting from their life between Germany and Hungary. Is it a lifelong process of orientation in a bi-national space? Being permanently excluded from society contrasts with the successful switching between two cultures. In the course of history social advancement or social degression have often been depending on ethnical belonging. The cultural region along the upper and middle Danube was marked by intense economical, scientific and artistic exchanges during the last millennium. Relationships intensified beginning from the late 17th century - after the end of the Ottoman Empire. Germans migrated to Hungary just as Hungarians migrated to Germany. Living together - or next to each other - made necessary a number of strategies of coexistence, of social and intellectual exchange, and, obviously, meant conflict, too. The exhibition does not expose national separation but shows ways of being in between or within two states together. This perspective is an alternative to the traditional thinking in national categories. Common thinking and acting is not limited by cultural patterns or by an orientation within national boundaries. The exhibition proves that the idea of clear human borderlines parallel to nationality is nothing but a "theoretical construct", which from an historical point of view, does not correspond with the reality of people's lives. Courses of life that can stimulate tolerance for an increasing number of people living "in between" today. The travelling exhibition had opened in the Donauschwäbisches Zentralmuseum in Ulm (july - october 2006). It still will show at the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin (27th oct. 2006 - 7th jan.2007), in the National Hungarian Museum Budapest (20th jan. - 20th march 2007) and, finally, in Pécs. (www.deutsche-ungarn.de) Dr. Beate Wild
4. CAN 'VIRTUAL PRESENTATION' AID IN INTEGRATING GLOBAL MUSEUM COMMUNITIES?A major problem in organizing any international conference is the logistics of how people can physically come to the conference venue. ICME and other ICOM international committees have tried to equalize possibilities for attendance by holding annual meetings in different parts of the world. ICME conferences are held at least on various continents over the years, even if it is not possible to have a "local" presence in all of the 56 countries where we have voting members. No matter what, however, there are always many museum professionals who are interested in participating in our conferences - but cannot attend for one reason or another. This is particularly true for ICME members from what could be termed "economically disadvantaged" countries. The July 2006 ICME conference "Connections, Communities and Collections" in Miami Beach, Florida, could act as a good example of the limitations of locality. A large number of excellent paper proposals from all over the world were accepted within the March proposal deadline. By June, however, almost half of those whose proposals had been accepted reported that they were forced to cancel their participation, due to difficulty in obtaining either travel funding or US visas. Because of this - only a few weeks before the conference was to start - the organizing committee found itself in a quandary. Should the conference be reorganized in some way when a significant number of participants can't come? This dilemma led to the idea of a session with "virtual presentations" representing those who couldn't attend in person. This following invitation was sent to the participants who had to cancel: "Although you have informed us that will not be able to come to Miami to present your paper, we would like to invite you to do a "virtual" presentation at the ICME 2006 conference. Including alternative presentations of this kind at the conference can be a way of raising a discussion on how we might gain greater participation in ICME - even if funding sources are limited. You may choose to contribute by either making a "stand alone" PowerPoint presentation (which wouldn't need a live speaker to be understood by the audience) or to record your paper presentation as a MPEG video on DVD or CD, or simply record the presentation on an audio cassette or MP3 file." While only two of those who had cancelled were able to send in "virtual" presentations in time for the conference, I feel that the initiative functioned quite well as an experiment. Each of the presentations consisted of the full text of their paper to be read aloud while screening a PowerPoint summary. Participant comments after the presentations included:
I myself feel that we need to rethink the aims of our conferences, and to evaluate if there are more inclusive ways of maintaining international networks of museum professionals - which is what both ICOM and ICME are. Referring back to the case above, alternative forms of direct communication might be useful in generating better contact during such virtual presentations, such as SKYPE, IRC chatting, or even a standard telephone. The use of 'poster sessions' could also be a way of allowing 'virtual' participation in our conferences. These are issues which we should consider for our NEXT conference - the ICOM general conference in Vienna next year. YOUR ideas are requested on how they should be implemented. In the meantime, however, you should also be checking out the possibilities for you to participate there in person! Daniel Winfree Papuga
5. GRACE MORLEY FELLOWSHIP FOR ICOM 2007To be awarded by the ICOM India Trust Applications are invited for four/five Grace Morley Research
Fellowships from individual members of ICOM in the Asia-Pacific
region, having a minimum of three years continuous paid membership
of ICOM for the years 2004,2005,2006. Applicants shall be engaged
in curatorial, research and developmental work pertaining to
development of museums and the museum profession. The fellowships
will cover both ways air ticket and reasonable daily allowance in
Vienna for eight days for participation in the next ICOM General
Conference during 19-24 August, 2007, with a view to offer
opportunities for enriching the on-going research of candidates
through global interaction with ICOM members in different parts of
the world.
The candidates must remain active in the International
Committees of ICOM of their choice and must be invited to make
presentations in the International Committee meetings coinciding
with the ICOM General Conference in Vienna.
6. PROFESSOR OF ETHNOLOGYETHNOLOGIE (culture matérielle et muséologie). Poste de professeur, professeure au Département d'histoire. Poste à temps complet. Rang adjoint. Date d'entrée en fonction: 1er janvier 2007. Date de clôture du concours : 27 octobre 2006 Qualifications:
Une aptitude démontrée à la collaboration interdisciplinaire, notamment avec les autres disciplines?présentes au Département d'histoire (archéologie, archivistique, histoire, histoire de l'art) serait également un atout. Description du poste:
L'Université Laval est une université francophone où l'enseignement se donne en français. L'Université Laval applique un programme d'accès à l'égalité qui consacre la moitié des postes vacants à l'engagement de femmes. Le Département d'histoire incite notamment toutes les candidates potentielles à communiquer à l'adresse ci-dessous pour obtenir plus d'informations. Conformément aux exigences prescrites en matière d'immigration au Canada, la priorité sera accordée aux citoyens canadiens et aux résidents permanents du Canada. Une lettre de présentation, un curriculum vitae, AU PLUS trois lettres de recommandation, et une publication pertinente ou un chapitre de la thèse de doctorat doivent parvenir au plus tard le 27 octobre 2006 à 16h00, à l'adresse suivante: Alain Laberge
7. UP-COMING CONFERENCES AND EVENTSOctober 2-6: "Thinking, evaluating, rethinking", ICOM-CECA Annual Meeting, Rome, Italy. http://ceca.icom.museum/Rome2006.htm? October 4-7: "Site Museums", ICOM-ICMAH annual meeting, Minneapolis - St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. http://www.icmah.com October 4-7: "Intangible Heritage: African Museums & Living Cultures". AFRICOM 2nd General Assembly and International Conference, Cape Town, South Africa, in partnership with the South African Museum Association. http://www.africom.museum/ or http://www.samaweb.org.za/home.htm October 4-7: "Site Museums", ICOM-ICMAH annual meeting, Minneapolis - St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. http://www.icmah.com October 6-8: "Museum and Society", colloquium at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest, Romania. For information, contact cristea.gabriela@gmail.com http://www.itcnet.ro/mtr/ October 8 - 10: "Africa & ICTOP: A Global and Continental View of Training", South Africa Annual Meeting In co-operation with IZIKO MUSEUMS, AFRICOM and SAMA, South African Museums Association. Cape Town, South Africa. http://ictop.icom.museum October 11-14: "Textile Narratives and Conversations", Textile Society of America Symposium, Toronto, Canada. http://www.textilesociety.org/ October 16 : "Getting the Picture. Using visual collections as historical evidence", a day conference held at the People's History Museum, Manchester, UK. http://www.phm.org.uk/getting/flier.doc October 19-20 : "Ethnographic Film: Museums, Documentation, Science", Ethnographic museum, Zagreb, Croatia. http://www.etnografski-muzej.hr/ October 23-25: Museum Association Annual conference, BICC, Bournemouth, UK. http://www.museumsassociation.org? November 2-4: "New Roles and Missions for Museums", INTERCOM 2006 Annual Meeting and Conference, Taipei, Taiwan. http://www.intercom.museum/ November 15-19: 105th AAA Annual Meeting, San Jose, CA, USA. http://www.aaanet.org/mtgs/mtgs.htm November 17-18: "Kunst und Ethnographie: Zum Verhältnis von visueller Kultur und ethnographischem Arbeiten", Berlin, Germany. http://www.gfe-online.org/ December 3 - 7: "Transcending postcolonial conditions: Towards?alternative modernities", conference co-sponsored by Anthropology Southern Africa (ASnA), the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) and the Pan-African Anthropological Association (PAAA), Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.uct-cmc.co.za/conferences/2006/tpc/info.php December 7-9: "Digital Interpretation in Cultural Heritage, Art and Science Museums", NODEM 06, Oslo, Norway. Deadline for papers and exhibition proposals: October 15. http://www.tii.se/v4m/nodem January 23-25, 2007: "L'anthropologie face à ses objets : nouveaux contextes ethnographiques", Campus de Saint-Charles, Université de Provence, Marseille, France. http://www.vjf.cnrs.fr/lms/Colloque.htm March 17-25 2007: Bilan du Film Ethnographique. Musée de l'Homme, Paris, France. http://www.comite-film-ethno.net/ March 28-April 1, 2007: "New Frontiers in Arts Sociology, Creativity, Support and Sustainability", 4th Interim Conference of the ESA Research Network Sociology for the Arts, Lueneburg and Hamburg, Germany. Deadline for proposals: October 15, 2006. http//www.new-arts-frontiers.eu April 10-13, 2007: "Thinking through tourism", Association of Social Anthropologists annual conference, London, UK. http://www.theasa.org/asa07/ May 11-12, 2007: "Collecting across Cultures in the Early Modern World", San Marino, California, USA. Deadline for proposals: November 1, 2006. http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/emsi/conferences May 24-27, 2007: 'Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe", International Association for Southeast European Anthropology (InASEA) - 4th Conference, Timisoara, Romania. Deadline for proposals: November 1, 2006. http://www-gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at/inasea/conference4.html August 19 - 24, 2007: "Museums and Universal Heritage: Universal Heritage / Individual Responsibility - Individual Heritage /?Universal Responsibility", 2007 ICOM General Conference, Vienna, Austria. http://www.icom-oesterreich.at/2007/index.html September 24-28, 2007: "Preserving Aboriginal Heritage: Technical and Traditional Approaches", Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa, Canada. Deadline for paper proposals: January 15, 2007 http://www.cci-icc.gc.ca/symposium/callforcontributors_e.aspx October 11-16 2007 : International Mining History Conference 2007, Flanders, Belgium. Deadline for paper proposals: June 1 2007 http://www.miningheritage.org/
8. WORDS FROM THE EDITORI am very pleased to include Dr Richard West's thoughtful and informative paper, first presented at the 2006 ICME conference here in the News. Do remember this paper is also available, along with some others, at the ICME website http://icme.icom.museum. That the conference in Miami was such a success is surely thanks to the excellent planning of Annette, who ensured participants had some really stimulating experiences, as Lief's photographs at http://home.online.no/~pareli/Florida/florida1.html testify. While my own funding bid to the British Academy was unsuccessful it was good to speak with the ICME Board members at least via SKYPE, a communication system, which is new for me, but one that I can now recommend highly to our International and European Masters students here at the University of Leicester. At The Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester we are saying goodbye to our wonderful students in the 2005-2006 intake about to welcome a new group for next year. Once again we are looking forward to welcoming a diverse group of students and are expecting 18 different counties to be represented on the 2006-2007 course. I am only saddened each year, as I am sure the other Museum Studies course providers are, that adequate funding is not available for more students from around the world to study with us in the UK and many highly qualified students who we have accepted onto the courses need to defer their places until their financial resources are secured. I know our courses benefit enormously from the input of students from outside of the UK. I wonder if we might join forces and better lobby our governments for scholarships. Until we meet again, I wish you all a peaceful and prosperous happy new (academic) year. My very best wishes. Viv
The deadline for the next issue is 30th December 2006. Please send your news to any of the above contact addresses, although email is preferred. ICME - International Committee for Museums and
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