UNESCO INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL OF MUSEOLOGY

Head:
Doc. PhDr. Zbyněk Stránský, CSc.

Žerotínovo náměstí 9, 601 77 Brno,
tel.:42 128 237

ISSOM succeeded in establishing a close relationship with the publishing house of Dr. Christian Müller-Straten in Munich. This publishing house issued many ISSOM study texts and a festschrift from the "Museology for Tomorrow's World" conference and continues to mediate information on ISSOM activities via the Internet. It was decided that - together with ISSOM - it would publish the "Wunderkammer" international museological collection. The majority of contributions will be published not only in text form but also on CD-ROM. This relation also influenced plans for a new ISSOM course for 1998, part of which will take place in Munich. Within a standard ISSOM course - which is concerned principally with museum communication and education - we tested for the first time methodology for the creation of museum collections with the help of computers. This programme was prepared by ISSOM together with the Computer Technology Laboratory of the Rector's Office; its success served as an incentive for the issuing of a special version on CD-ROM (currently in preparation). The last ISSOM course was seriously disrupted by floods in Moravia and Poland, and it was necessary for us to adapt part of the course programme to address this situation. During a meeting of the ICOM/ICOFOM committee, the head of ISSOM presented a draft version of "An Encyclopaedia of Museology" and proposed that experts abroad participate via the Internet in its refining. We are committed to the strengthening of the economic situation of the school, and we have prepared a number of projects connected with ISSOM courses with the support of sponsor organizations. As a reaction to the great level of interest expressed we plan a special course for next year for participants from the Czech Republic and Slovakia . Thanks to funding from various grants, we were able to make considerable additions to our museology library and to subscribe to foreign periodicals. This concerns mainly titles which are not otherwise available in the Czech Republic and without which ISSOM and the Department of Museology at the Faculty of Arts would not be able carry out their academic work. We compiled - together with the Faculties of Science and Education - a project for the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic which re-profiled educational programmes in museology. From the beginning of 1998, ISSOM will be taken over by a new head and all preparatory measures necessary for this takeover were taken. We expect that the present ISSOM head, by whom the school was founded and built up, will contribute to its further development on an external/part-time basis.

UNESCO CHAIR OF MUSEOLOGY AND THE WORLD HERITAGE

Head:
Prof. JUDr. Vinoš Sofka, PhDr. h.c.

Žerotínovo nám. 9, 601 77 Brno
tel.: 42 128 372,   tel./fax: 42 128 396
or tel.: 46-8-792 09 22,   fax: 46-8-758 14 74

Limited funds, overwhelmingly from extra-budgetary sources, substantially influenced the efforts of the Chair to develop its programme, and first of all to build up the basis for the international Transition Project (TP), approved by the UNESCO General Conference in the fall of 1995. This gave the opportunity of broadly promoting the UNESCO Chair and TP at special workshops, informal meetings and official negotiations on collaboration in the Russian Federation: in the Urals, Kamchatka, Siberia where the Chairholder was Chairman of the International Jury of the 2nd Museum Bienale in Krasnoyarsk, and Moscow, and in France: at the conference on Museology and Memory, organized by the ICOM International Committee of Museology in Paris and Bourgogne. In the Czech Republic, in March the Director of the Chair opened the solemn ceremony in honour of the 80th birthday of the Nestor of the Czech museology, Dr. J. Benes, with a keynote speech on international museology. The Chair contributed with lectures at the 11th course of the UNESCO International Summer School of Museology and at the Chair of Museology of the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University. Furthermore, the Chair initiated and worked out, for the General Conference of UNESCO in 1997, a draft resolution on the creative use of the memory of the past incorporated in the cultural and natural heritage, and on the active participation of museums and other heritage-related institutions in the process of democratization in post-totalitarian countries. At the initiative of the Chair, the founding meeting of the Czech Working Team of the Transition Project took place at Masaryk University in August 1997.