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Abstract
Over the past several decades, Québec has distinguished itself in Canada and abroad for its innovative approaches to museological practice and cultural heritage. A number of factors account for this distinctive practice: influential figures, creative experimentation, and Québec's deep social, cultural and political investment in museums and heritage among them. Museum practices that were influenced largely by the new museology movement of the 1970s, as well as by Québec's coming of age in the post‐Expo 67 era, as Raymond Montpetit has argued, have continued to evolve in resonance with ongoing societal transformations, a broadening heritage movement, as well as the effects of globalised and transnational cultures. Another interesting aspect of Québec's museological practices has also undoubtedly derived from the training and professional development programmes put in place by the province's association for museums and their professionals, the Société des musées du Québec (SMQ), since the late 1970s, as well as by the academic museology programmes introduced a little over a decade later.
This article will examine, in light of the transformations that have profoundly affected the contemporary museum world, the changing skill sets required by museum professionals, with special reference to how professional training and university programmes have evolved to address these needs in Québec since the 1970s. In a first instance, the contributions made by the SMQ towards the professionalisation of the field, through the development of a range of tools and activities, will be presented and analysed. Second, the creation and multiplication of graduate museology programmes—including Canada's first and still only doctorate in museology at the Université du Québec à Montréal—will be discussed. We consider how these education and training programmes have contributed to capacity building in the museum sector, in light of the field's emergent requirements, and in response to changing collections, management, communication and ethical paradigms, to meet the needs of today's community of museum professionals.
Notes
1. Some examples in support of one or several innovative approaches include the institutional structure, collecting and display techniques pioneered by the Musée de la civilisation, a society museum which was founded in Québec City in 1984 and opened to the public in 1989; the organisational structure and expography of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal (founded in 1979; inaugurated in 1989); the technologies used by Pointe‐à‐Callière, Montreal's museum of archaeology and history (1992) as well as by the McCord Museum in Montreal (founded in 1921); the (founded in 1983) Centre d'histoire de Montréal's focus on cultivating local memory and cultural diversity through its oral history clinics and exhibition programme; the institutional mission and programming of the Écomusée du fier monde (1980)––the latter known as a ‘citizen museum’––and the pedagogic activities of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre (founded in 1979), including its creation of a Human Rights department in 2010.
2. It is interesting to note that ICOM Canada's International Achievement Award has been awarded to professionals in Québec seven times in 12 years (2004–2016). Moreover, in a recent article, Raymond Montpetit has provided a comprehensive overview of Québécois museology, its development, influences and innovations since the 1950s, arguing that in the wake of Québec's Quiet Revolution, the province's museological practices underwent a period of renewal, ultimately leading to an important period of innovation in the 1980s (Montpetit Citation2015). Over the years, a number of important publications have traced and discussed the historical and contemporary evolution of museums and museum practices in Québec, highlighting both the professional (practical) and theoretical perspectives that specifically define Québécois developments and contributions to the field. These publications not only account for the trajectories of Québec's museums since the 1950s–1960s, but reveal uniquely Québecois insight and contributions within a broader Canadian context. Though far from exhaustive, select examples include Côté (ed., 1992); Bergeron (ed., Citation2005); Meunier and Luckerhoff (eds. Citation2012); Bergeron, Arsenault and Provencher St Pierre (eds., 2015b).
3. While the term ‘museum studies’ is more commonly used in the English‐speaking world, ‘museology’, widely used in Europe, is the preferred term in Québec when referring to the province's academic programmes and will be the term privileged throughout this article.
4. Some examples of specialised programmes include a one‐year postgraduate degree in interpretation (DESS en Interprétation et médiation culturelle) at the Université du Québec à Trois‐Rivières, as well as the Master's in Management in Cultural Enterprises and the Master's in Management in International Arts Management at the HEC Montréal.
5. ICOM's most recent definition of the term ‘museum’ dates back to 2007, when it included mention of ‘intangible heritage’ to the operational definition of museums (ICOM Citation2007, online).
6. On the history of the SMQ from 1958 to 2002, see Sirard (Citation2009).
7. As was the case for many similar organisations, the SMQ's daily operations had been seen to by the administrators on a voluntary basis. See Lemay in Larochelle (Citation1979, p. 2).
8. These seminars, L'acquisition d'une pièce de musée (October 1979) and Présentation d'une pièce de musée (November 1979), took place in Montreal over two days and were addressed to SMQ members, who paid $20 per seminar. In addition, participants could apply for a grant to attend from the ministère des Affaires culturelles or the CMA. Interestingly, the CMA still offers grants to professionals for attendance at training activities (see Trudel Citation1980, p. 18).
9. For example, the 1980–1981 programme included a seminar on preventive conservation for contemporary art, held in Montreal; one on the museum as an educational resource, in Trois‐Rivières; one on management theories applied to museums, in Montreal; and one on framing, in Québec City (Trudel Citation1980, p. 23).
10. The CMA adopted its Ethical Behaviour of Museum Professionals in 1979, and then Ethics Guidelines, CMA in 1999. The International Council of Museums adopted its Code of Ethics for Museums in 1986; the code was revised in 2006. This reference tool, which has been translated into 37 languages, sets minimum standards of professional practice and performance for museums and their staff. Available at: http://icom.museum/the-vision/code-of-ethics/.
11. The Réseau Info‐Muse started as a project, and was then made permanent as one of the SMQ's three departments, with training and professional development and communications (officially named in 1995 with the creation of the first website). It offers its members personalised guidance and expertise on all aspects related to collection management. It also manages the Info‐Muse database, available at http://infomuse.smq.qc.ca/Infomuse/f_MasterLayout.cgi.
12. The main tools and the Info‐Muse database are available at: http://www.musees.qc.ca/fr/professionnel/activites-services/info-muse/outils-de-gestion-des-collections.
13. It became the Société des musées québécois (Québec Museum Society) in 1973 and the Société des musées du Québec in 2013.
14. In 1992, after more than 10 years in operation, the SMQ's Department of training and professional development commissioned a broad‐ranging study to assess the training activities and the needs with regard to skills upgrading. See Boucher and Lapointe (Citation1992). Since then, it has regularly organised discussion groups and surveys and has multiplied contacts in the field. It conducted two major studies on the training needs of the field, in 2006 and 2012. In 2015, it formulated a new training and professional development policy, and it is working with a committee to understand current issues and the ensuing needs for skills upgrading.
15. Although its name was changed, in 2014, to ‘Compétence Culture’ the mission of this sector‐based committee on the cultural workforce remains the same.
16. These observations were extensively discussed and documented during the États généraux des musées du Québec, held by the SMQ between 2009 and 2011. All of the 71 recommendations, including 11 concerning human resources issues, adopted by the members are available in Musées, Vol. 30 (2012), pp. 40–59. See http://www.musees.qc.ca/fr/professionnel/publications/revue/etats-generaux-des-musees.
17. The collection currently includes the skills dictionary for exhibition planning (SMQ Citation2010) and for collection management (SMQ Citation2013).
18. Produced for the ministère de la Culture et des Communications, this guide is intended to help museum professionals design and implement a collection‐management policy and guidelines that will ensure practice compliant with the norms and mission of their institution (CitationMinistère de la Culture et des Communications, online a).
19. These standards determine the set of duties and responsibilities to be respected to ensure healthy, effective, and optimal management of collections (SMQ, online).
20. All of the contracts are available online free of charge, in an inscribable PDF format, in French (SMQ Citation2014d) and in English (SMQ Citation2014c). It is also interesting to note that the contracts concerning visual artists have received the approval of their professional association, the Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Québec.
21. See the Observatoire de la culture et des communications du Québec (OCCQ), which annually publishes statistics regarding cultural activities in Québec, including the attendance figures of museums and cultural heritage sites. Available at: http://www.stat.gouv.qc.ca/statistiques/culture/ [accessed 13 September 2016).
22. Université du Québec à Montréal, Université d'Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, Programme international conjoint, Doctorat en muséologie, médiation, patrimoine (Sainte‐Foy, QC: Éditions MultiMondes, 2005).
23. Museum studies courses such as those taught at the University of British Columbia within the Department of Anthropology and at the Museum of Anthropology, and the Museum studies programme established at the University of Toronto in conjunction with the Royal Ontario Museum in 1969, arrived early on the scene. Related but more specialised training was developed in the form of a conservation programme at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1970. Still other related programmes were founded at the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser and the University of Guelph throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the post‐graduate technical training programme, Museum Management and Curatorship, offered at Fleming College in conjunction with Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.
24. The creation of ICOM's International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) in the late 1960s had already paved the way for internationally recognised standards and training qualifications that included nine main components: (1) An introduction to museology: History and Purpose of Museums; (2) Organisation, Operation and Management of Museums; (3) Museum Architecture, Layout and Equipment; (4) Collections: Origin, Related Records Set‐up and Movement; (5) Scientific Activities and Research; (6) Preservation and Care of Collections; (7) Presentation: Exhibitions; (8) The Public (including public facilities); and (9) Cultural and Educational Activities of Museums.
By the year 2000, the ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Museum Professional Development had synthesised these nine qualifications into five core competencies: general, museology, management, public programming and information and collections management and care. While these have provided general guidelines for professional museum training courses for both university and local museum associations, notable differences exist between these guidelines and the academic curricula of museum studies. Williams and Simmons attribute this disparity in part to the relationship between museology and the various disciplinary associations it has espoused. In some university settings, museum studies is taught within art history and anthropology programmes, and in some cases management programmes, in others, alongside library science and archives programmes––now known in North America as iSchools, as is the case of the Museum Studies programme in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. The teaching of museology locally has undoubtedly been influenced by the theories, methodologies and discourses of these specific disciplinarian affiliations (Williams and Hawks (eds) Citation2006).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jennifer Carter
Jennifer Carter is Director of the graduate museology programme at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she is also Professor of New Museologies, Intangible Heritage and Cultural Objects in the Department of Art History. She has published her research widely in English and French journals. In 2013, Jennifer Carter was appointed Associate Editor of the international journal Museum Management and Curatorship, published by Taylor and Francis/Routledge in the UK.
Katia Macias‐valadez
Katia Macias‐Valadez is Director of the Training and Professional Development Department at the Société des musées du Québec (SMQ) since 2011. From 2004 to 2010, she was, among other responsibilities, editor of the Musées magazine at the SMQ Communications Department.