Re-imagining Museums in a Pandemic: New Governance For a Living, Open and Sustainable Museum

Abstract

By means of a case study, this article presents the need to develop a contextual museology that allows models of museum management to be adapted in times of transition or crisis. It also defends the need to implement knowledge-management processes that advocate systematising and documenting the memory of museum entities, which can in turn serve as a foundation for planning museum practices amid crises.

Despite the challenges caused by its involuntary closure, for Colombia’s Centro de Museos de la Universidad de Caldas (Museum Centre at the University of Caldas) the pandemic became the ideal setting to carry out, behind closed doors, an assessment of 25 years of continuous work. What should be done with a closed museum? The institutional response was to begin an internal evaluation process to re-imagine the museum in a future era of post-pandemic work.

The Centro de Museos therefore developed a new museum plan, financed by a grant from the Colombian government's Ministry of Culture. Turning to online modes of working posed a challenge on the implementation of participatory methodologies that were used at different organisational levels, such as the creation of collaborative murals, interviews and online discussions. These exercises made it possible to integrate different perspectives and visions of the museum and to recover lost memories that contributed to a new conceptualisation of the university museum.

Keywords:

• university museum
• sustainability
• museum plan
• museum documentation
• Centro de Museos
• Colombia

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the honesty and dedication of the Centro de Museos’ team who supported the development of this project at all times. Thanks to Carolina Aguirre Tapasco, Héctor Ramirez Chaves, Lucimar Gomes Dias, Lina Marcela Marin, July Quiceno Colorado, Julián Salazar, Juana Valentina Bustos, Jose Omar López Obando and Dayana Cárdenas. A very special thanks also go to Luis Carlos Manjarrés, museologist and external consultant for this project. We also thank those who collaborated with us on developing the collaborative workshops, the students Yenni Marulanda, Jesús David Quintero and Juan Camilo Aranzazu, the anthropologist Juliana Velásquez and the cultural manager and visual artist Andrea Ospina.

Notes

1 La Misión Internacional de Sabios Colombia 2019 was convened by the National Government with the objective of bolstering and implementing new public policies in education, science, technology and innovation.

2 Teaching material reproduced under CC license parameters. Available at https://elmuseoreimaginado.com/loteria-de-museos/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas

Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas is Senior Curator in World Archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK. She has a degree both in anthropology and in history from the University of Los Andes in Colombia. She specialises in the archaeology of historical periods in Latin America, cultural heritage and museums. She worked as an assistant archaeologist on the Gold Museum (Museo del Oro) extension project in Bogotá. From 2007 to 2011 she was Director of the Pre-Columbian Art Museum (Museo de Arte Precolombino – Casa del Alabado) in Quito, Ecuador. Since 2016 she has been co-researcher of the historical archaeology project of the Church of St Ignatius (Templo de San Ignacio) in Bogotá. From 2018 to 2021 she worked as a lecturer on the Anthropology and Sociology programme at the University of Caldas in Manizales, Colombia, and as a curator of archaeology at the university’s Centro de Museos. She is currently Senior Curator in World Archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

María Fernanda Zuluaga Medina

María Fernanda Zuluaga Medina is an anthropologist at the Universidad de Caldas (Colombia). She is a student enrolled in the Museography programme at the ENCRyM - INAH (Mexico City, Mexico). She worked as the coordinator of the educational area at the Centro de Museos of the University of Caldas. She is currently working as an archaeologist at the Preventive Archaeology Unit at the Universidad de Los Andes. Her research areas are museums, cultural heritage and archaeological collections.