MUSEOLOGIST VERSUS COMMUNITY OF MEMORY. ATTEMPT AT DEFINING TERMS FOR THE SAKE OF LEGISLATIVE AMENDMENTS

The contemporary role of museum reaches far beyond the traditional understanding of the institution’s role to be played in the preservation of tangible culture monuments. It is currently a creative institution on various levels of man’s activity, a centre for continuous learning, community and creative hub of healthy social relations. Museums continue to cover with their interests newer and newer domains of human activity, among which art and history remain essentially important, though not the only ones. Traditional factual competences that we used to find in museums: a historian of art, a historian, an archaeologist, an ethnologist, continue to be needed, however far insufficient. Today museums have a need of staff who represent a wide range of competences, both to work on the ‘collections’, and on the intangible heritage as well as contacts with the public. Today’s museums expect from the staff the competence in so-called 2nd grade history, namely these who do not only identify and document the past, but also explain what and why we remember from the past. Looking from such a perspective at museums, whose activity seems to be described in the Act on Museums of 21 November 1996 (with later amendments), and in the implementation regulations to the Act, the employee relations require a prompt legislative intervention. The distinction of the staff of museums and around them into ‘museologists’ and ‘non-museologists’ is today unquestionably anachronistic and inefficient, impeding the implementation of the tasks facing these institutions. Furthermore, the source of the name ‘museologist’ is sought, and the analysis of the legislative contradiction in this respect is conducted, while new solutions adjusted to the social needs are provided.