Museum Studies

Adapted from ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Museum Professional Development (2000)

Competency Categories Components of Categories Activities of Components
General Competencies Communications
  • Inter-cultural communication
  • Written, oral, and non-verbal
  • Terminology/vocabulary
Evaluation methods
  • Analysis of data
  • Data collection
  • Project design
  • Purpose
  • Report methods
Financial management
  • Elementary numeracy
  • Basic analysis, monitoring, and reporting methods
Information technology
  • Web sites
  • Multimedia formats
Interpersonal relationships
  • Collaboration and networking
  • Disability awareness
  • Strategies for museums
  • Political considerations
Museums and society
  • Accountability
  • Issues of identity and discrimination
  • Ethnic, racial, cultural and intellectual diversity
  • Knowledge of local, national, regional, international issues, resources, and conditions
  • Public trust
Nature of work
  • Administrative and management policies and practices
  • Affiliations with other organizations/consultancy/outsourcing
  • Multi-disciplinary environment
  • Quality maintenance of services and products
Professionalism
  • Ethics and values – personal
  • Specific to an individual museum and culture
  • Relative to discipline and occupation
Identity
  • Intellectual curiosity
  • Initiative, self motivation, self-evaluation, flexibility
  • Leadership
  • Organization of museum associations–local, regional, national, international
  • Self-management of career
  • Standard-setting
  • Recognition and integration of diversity into all processes
  • Recognition of excellence
  • Vision of and purpose for museums and personal role at individual institution
Project Management
  • Delegation and review
  • Multi-disciplinary environment
  • Planning and organizing
  • Priority-setting
  • Problem-solving
  • Resource management, implementation and evaluation
  • Team processes
Research
  • Ability to seek out and acquire new information, apply learning to tasks
  • Critical Thinking
  • Methodology
Resources in the field
  • Literature and information sources including bibliographies, directories, and indexes
  • Professional associations: international, national, regional, and local
Museology Community museology
  • Assessing/understanding community needs
  • Exhibition techniques as tools for mobilizing community members for the use of their common resources
  • Interactions between communities, their heritage and economic development
  • Processes which originate from community efforts
Vision
Governance
  • Board (or other governing body) composition
  • Monitoring responsbilities
  • Types
  • Policy making
  • Roles and relationships
Issues in museum practices
  • Business orientation vs. larger public “good”
  • “Collections” vs. “Ideas”
  • Dominant voice / power in museum interpretation
  • Cultural democracy
  • Intellectual Access
  • Physical Access
  • Professional vs. vocational occupation
  • Repatriation of cultural patrimony, human remains, funerary goods
Legal context for practice
  • Cultural heritage – local, regional, national, and international approaches including conventions
  • Copyright and artist’ rights – national laws and International Conventions
  • Artistic freedom of expression – local, national, and comparative approaches
  • Political, economic, social and cultural contexts of museums in local, national and international arenas including globalization, environmentalism, sustainable development, and cultural diversity
Research activities, both discipline-based and museological
Management Accreditation
Advisory bodies
  • Public, professional, discipline-based
Architecture
  • Accessibility standards
  • Adaptive use
  • Environmental controls
  • Furnishings
  • Museum architects
  • Relationship of form and function
  • Theory and practice of museum architecture
  • Discipline, cultural milieu, and climate considerations
  • Visitor amenities – lounge, restrooms
Business and operational management
  • Contract management
  • Policy development
  • Program development
  • Goal setting
  • Priority setting
  • Clarification of objectives
  • Strategic planning
  • Resource management
  • Implementation
  • Evaluation
Community relations
  • Advocacy
  • Coalition-building
  • Public programming activities
Financial planning and management
  • Audit
  • Budget
  • Financial control
  • Documentation
  • Reporting
  • Risk management
Formal structure
  • Authority under which museum is established
  • Governing laws under which museums are constituted
  • Articles of incorporation
  • Constitution and by-laws
  • Statement of purpose / intent / mission
Fund raising and grant development (income-generation)
  • Development (income-generation) plan
  • Record keeping and acknowledgments
  • Resource identification
  • Capital campaign
  • Gifts / bequests
  • Techniques / Strategies
Human resource planning and management
  • Allocation of resources
  • Analysis of tasks
  • Authority
  • Compensation structuring (pay/salary scales)
  • Consultancy and contract workers
  • Cross-cultural training
  • Diversity
  • Hiring (recruiting) / discharge (dismissal) of employees
  • Labor relations
  • Management of multi-discipline, multi-cultural teams and organizations
  • Staff morale and motivation
  • Performance measures and evaluation
  • Supervision
  • Training needs analysis of organization and staff and provision
  • Volunteers
Income producing activities
  • Concessions (franchises)
  • Fees
  • Retail operations
Information management
Insurance / indemnity
Law
  • Legal system – national and international comparisons
  • Legal status of museum
  • Legal responsibilities of personnel and board
  • Law and the collection – accessioning, de-accessioning and bequests
  • Contract law, including loans and exhibition exchanges
  • Tax law
Marketing
  • Audience (visitor) research
  • Promotional materials
  • Public image
  • Tourism / business links
  • Tools for communicating
Membership / “friends” organizations
  • Services
  • Hospitality management
Physical plant and site managment
  • Emergency preparedness
  • Fire, safety, and security
  • Plant maintenance
Public affairs
Media relations
Organizational Theory
  • Best practices
  • Cross-cultural skills
  • Processes of change – Change managment
  • Models of organizational change
  • Reflexive practice
  • Techniques for fostering creative thinking and action in work
  • Understanding of how innovations emerge within complex organizations
  • Re-engineering
Public Programming Communications
  • Communication theory
  • Knowledge of the dynamics of symbolic experience
  • Developing communication linkages and creating relevant focal points and forums for exchange of ideas
  • Orientation – physical and intellectual
  • Semiotics – what things signify
  • Signage (labeling etc.)
Exhibitions
  • Exhibition theory
  • Graphics
  • History and philosophy
  • Lighting
  • Planning, design, fabrication, installation and evaluation
  • Principles of visual presentations
  • Types / styles of exhibitions
  • Use of audiovisuals, computers – Virtual exhibitions
  • Web site creation and management
Education and interpretation
  • Educational theory, psychology, and sociology
  • History and philosophy
  • Learning theory
  • Planning, design, production and evaluation of programs
  • Models of practice – Use of text, objects, graphics, manipulative materials and media
  • Policies
Publications and products
Visitor service and public relationships
  • Circulation
  • Local, national, international, and regional situations, issues
  • Management of visitation
  • Non-visitors characteristics
  • Numbers and types
  • Preservation requirements of collection and structure
  • Visitor characteristics
Information and Collections Management and Care Archives
  • Records management
Collections
  • Access: cultural, physical and intellectual: visitation, tourism
  • Agents of deterioration: physical, chemical, and biological factors
  • Automation: Computer software and hardware selection
  • Cataloguing
  • Collection issues
  • Collection management – Preventive care
  • Copies / reproductions / digitization – Copyright
  • Quality control
  • Development
  • Documentation / Data management – Generation, organization, and care
  • Electronic / world wide aspects
  • Environmental monitoring and control
  • Temperature, relative humidity, light and atmospheric pollutants
  • Handling
  • History and philosophy
  • Kinds of collections – Ancillary collections including audiovisuals, slides, negatives
  • Built environment including sites, landscapes, structures
  • Cultural heritage including oral history, folklife, language
  • Documents, manuscripts, archives
  • Objects, artworks, sculptures, specimens, prints
  • Packing and transporting
  • Pest management
  • Policies
  • Principles of conservation / restoration – Properties of materials, implications for preservation
  • Registration – Accession
  • Deaccession
  • Disposal Loans
  • Resources
  • Standards
  • Storage
  • Theft
  • Use of (in): Natural and cultural contexts
  • Exhibitions
  • Public service role
  • Research
  • Library and information services
  • Scientific activities
  • Data collection, preparation and analysis
  • Research design
  • Phases of the research process
  • Sampling procedures / survey tools / procedures