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

History is an art that explores events in the past on the basis of extant historicalsources, attempting to explain and interpret them. The ancient Romans said that it wasmagistra vitae, meaning that it tells us how to live in order to stay out of trouble, makinguse of experience. The museum is a specific medium that in given situations presentsand interprets history, basing its credibility on museum objects, the museality of whichis in good part filled with its participation in or immediate or indirect testimony to givenhistorical events.If we attempt to make use of our knowledge about a museum object as an INDOCobject (information-documentation object), then we cannot avoid the fact that in astructural approach to the INDOC object (after Dahlberg; Tudjman, 1983:70) wedistinguish three dimensions within which information about the object and informationthat the object emits move. These dimensions are time, space and society. Thesethree dimensions serve for us to understand all the breadth of the past and to choosean appropriate manner to interpret and communicate history in museums.Time, as category of duration, is related to the object as document, which has in itselfand in its material and structure all the essential characteristics that determine theobject as witness of historical events. This is the category in which we analyse andendeavour to understand every time within the life of the museum object. We look forimportant points in which the object has taken part in the historical events or perhapsdefinitions that help us to determine the range of time that the object tells us of in itsmaterial and duration. The value of age, with all forms of damage to the material,contributes to the credibility of the object. The possibility for the linkage and jointexhibition of objects that in their primary context never lived together opens up newpossibilities of the depiction of knowledge about some phenomenon from the past,particularly about history as a cogent interpretation of the past.Space, as the second dimension, in which the form and size of the object are found inreal space, enables the communication of a message in a horizontal sense. Space isin effect a horizontal cross section of any given temporal moment. In other words, inany historical moment there was a space in which the historical events took place. It isa changeable category, but it is essential for the understanding of the function ofobjects of the material world. Space is a framework of events and it is necessary tosummon it up and discover the real function and position of the museum object in thespace of a given historical event, with the proviso that its communicative function at anexhibition will be manifested in a virtual space, which only in certain sequences willallude to the real space of the time in which the things unfolded. Every time has itsdifferent spatial frameworks such as: urban, rural, natural, political or any other that canbe determined by research. The discovery of the interdependence of an object and thespace in which it lived is a necessary precondition for the spatial framework in whichsome historical event to be reconstructed and communicated can be defined. This willthen be in some exhibition venue, in situ, in historical buildings or some other historicalsite. One ought not to lose sight of the fact that objects also reflect relations betweenthe life inside or outside a building. The differences between the life of an objectoutdoors and indoors will necessarily have to be stated in the interpretation of ahistorical event in a museum environment.Society, the last of these three dimensions, determines the relations between people orgroups of people. The social meaning or status defines the role of an object inside anyof the historical or current social milieus. Social significance has a variable magnitude,hence the theory of social relativity helps us to understand that some object can havein certain periods a high and in other a low social significance. This significance, whichdoes not depend on the value of an object, or on its factual testimony about someevent, rather on the interpretation of the understanding and meaning of the object in334