New Museology is an idea of the museum as an educational tool in the service of social development.
The Museum, for us, is or rather should be one of the most highly perfected tools that society has available to prepare its own transformation and construction (constructivism).
At the center of this idea of a museum lie not things, but people.
Although it is described as "new", new museology actually follows the tradition among museum people dating centuries back of considering the museum as :
An educational institution in the service of society.
In 1971, at the Ninth General Conference of International Council of Museums, the philosopher Stanislas Adoveti, pointed out the precarious situation of the museum. He believed that the museum as an institution would either have to change radically or loose its right to exist and sooner or later disappear.
This was a scary idea and also a wake up call for museum educators. But in fact, museums appear to be surviving the crisis in a materialistic world where again the power of knowledge is rising, but this time the power of knowledge is for everybody who want to know the nature of learning and not only for an academic group of people.
After several attempts to reform traditional museums, the final purpose was to help museums achieve social meaning more in regard to concrete contribution to everyday life.
These considerations finally led to the creation and testing of new forms of museums.
Now the new museum wants to make a concrete contribution to coping with everyday life by pointing out problems and possible solutions. The business of museums must be to realize a populations right to imagize, to name, to define what the local needs are.
By identifying and naming the material and non-material elements that constitute their environment people realize their right to their own local and regional identity, they take possession of their world and gain a certain control over it.
Museums as educational institutions can contribute to a population?s consciousness of its neighborhood or region and act upon it in a constructive way :
Building our community with knowledge and dialogue.
And the museums are the perfect place to organize dialogues for different institutions. It will be like a people?s university where different organizations talk their heart out but are also open for other point of views because the museum is a institution for objectivism. It is the place which can and must mirror the questions which individuals and social groups are asking themselves ? not to supply answers, but to state the problems, point out alternatives and offer information materials. So the museums are currently being used as center for social dialogues and not only for scientific or academic dialogues.
The ideal museum would be without architectural barriers, without disciplinary barriers and without barriers to public access and therefor and "open" museum in the most extreme sense, just serving the needs of our society.
This is why the latest catchword in educational circles is "constructivism" applied both to how people learn and to the nature of knowledge.
What does this mean to museum educators?
This term refers to the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves ? each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning as he or she learns. Constructing meaning is learning, there is no other way.
So now you can understand how the museum has a very important task in our community but this can only be accomplished when the society and the government understand and learn about this idea of educating and socializing through the museums. And the question is when is the society ready to use the museum as a center for objective/social dialogues.
