Commission on Culture Annual Meeting

Museums: Bridging Baltic Past and Future

The conference of the Commission on Culture was devoted to the museums and their role in contemporary society. It was held on 3-4 October 2011 in Riga and Tukums. The theme: "Museums: Bridging Baltic Past and Future" was closely tied up with the theme of the UBC General Conference in Liepāja.

The CoC's conference met with a great interest. Over 107 participants took part.

The role of the museums has been constantly changing since 1991 when the process of re-union of the Baltic Sea Region became possible. To preserve the heritage the contemporary museums take new responsibilities to become an active social actors working for the sustain-ability of the society.

The aim of the Commission was to invite the museum professionals to examine developments and tendencies in the museum field and to share good practices.The museum objects and stories, ideas and concepts, contents and forms of artistic expressions, architecture and exhibition design, newely built and renovated museums, as well as new projects were in focus of the conference.

107 participants from Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Russia attended the meeting. 19 reports were given during the conference. The key-note speaker, famous museum designer Jowa Kis Jowak from the Netherlands spoke about the tendencies in the exhibition design and change of the artistic expressions since mid 1980s. The other speakers presented the recent developments in the museum field in the Baltic Sea Region.

The first working session of the conference was dedicated to the Art Museum „Riga Bourse"opened on 19 August 2011, the processes and results of the restoration of the building and reorganization of the museum of the Foreign Art of Latvia was in the limelight.

Another working session was devoted to the new projects in Estonia and Lithuania. The development of the National Museum of Estonia, the idea and content of the new building, were presented, as well as the reconstructed National Gallery of Art in Lithuania. The third working session was about the museums in castles and manor houses.

The second day of the conference took place in Durbe Manor House in Tukums, which a complex of the Classicism Style buildings and it is the only museum in Latvia presenting the interiors of typical Baltic Germans Manor Houses of the end of the 19^th century. To develop the accessibility of the museum collections, the project "Contemporary Museum in the Complex of the Durbe Manor in Tukums" has been launched recently and supported by the European Regional Development Fund. The activities supported by ERDF have been developed also in the Bauska Castle, where the residence of Kurland Duke is under the reconstruction, and in the Cēsis New Castle.

The participants got acquainted with the experience of the N.Roerich Museum House revival in Izvara in Russia and with the development of the museum model in Lolland-Falster in Denmark. The final discussion of the conference led to the conclusion that the museum developments in the BSR are determined by historical, political, economic and social circumstances and each country is looking for its own approaches to the safeguarding of the heritage. All agreed that the accessibility and social inclusion are the most important issues the museums should pay their attention on.

The CoC's conference was organized by the Tukums museum in cooperation with the International Committee of Museums (ICOM), National Committee of Latvia, the Society for Fostering the Museology in Baltics and Art Museum „Riga Bourse".