ICOM International Council of Museums - International Institute for ...

At this point the museology must tackle a new and difficult task: how to tell the story,that is, what criteria to follow when elaborating a particular discourse that, faithful toreality, could be able to show impartially the facts as they happened, without biased orinterested interpretations. When creating a specific discourse, we will have todetermine if we have classification criteria for the several narrations, and if the answeris affirmative, what discourse museology would use when exposing and telling the storyof the objects. We must remember that any version we made of the museum objects,this version will be altered by the fragmentation of spaces used for them to be seenand interpreted.About kinds of discourses, we can say that there is a great variety of them, from theliterary discourse to politic, philosophical, ethic or social. Each one stresses thoseaspects they want to remark as fundamental for the reader to pay more attention. So,museology needs to use their own discourse to transmit the message throughexhibitions, the museum discourse, capable of reaching a wide range of population.This museum discourse has to be the result of a previous work of interpretation andexposition that, well documented and with a good groundwork, could join thearguments of the reason and the intuitions of affects and emotions, showing who istelling the story, who is the receiver and where it has been elaborated, in order to avoidincorrect o partial interpretations.Because of that any museum discourse must pay attention to language used in thenarrative and adapt to the circumstances of different museums, what makes possiblethe creative interpretation of the facts exposed, but avoiding manipulating intentionsthat lead necessarily to twist and fake such facts. Consequently, museum discoursemust be open, plural, diversified, multilingual, many-sided, interdisciplinary andmulticultural, the same as the experience of different societies that conforms the historyof human race. A discourse where we can find not only the advanced societies that usewriting, but also those primitive societies without written records that use the myth, theoral tradition and the game to express their point of view about the world andsurrounding reality . A discourse that pleads for the marginal and the excluded, theexploited, the new paupers, those who feel themselves different because of theirdifferent way of understanding and feeling sexuality, those who are a minority andthose who are always wandering looking for a new land to live with a bit of dignity andrespect. So, we need a new way to look at the world and the reality with all theirdistinctions and visions, which made us able to create new discourses where history isnot told from a partial and blind perspective, but telling the truth, overcoming the sadmoments of individual stories and minority groups and being able to open newprospects of hope.Museology and the critical interpretation of historyWe can confirm today that museums are experiencing a great transformation from thearchitectural point of view, but not always with an important museographical andmuseological transformation. The new information technologies, along with deep socialand ideological changes produced during the last decades of 20th century and thebeginning of the 21st, have been such an important revolution in the world of museumsthat we can consider out-of-date the original concept of museums as mere expositivecentres. There are a lot of new things regarding security and preservation of works,lighting systems and distribution, studying and restoration of objects and attention to allkinds of public. But despite of all this, museums are going through a crisis and need toreconsider their functions when facing the heritage, history and memory.The task of museum studies experts with objects that history has left behind goesbeyond the mere collection, so he must rebuild the past by means of the elaboration ofa theoretical and visual museum narration capable of transmitting a message full ofsense to the citizen. Such narration must be able to seduce the visitor with thehistorical and mythological background connected to historical places or their meaning310