Former Director-General of UNESCO: Museums are cutting-edge laboratories of our shared humanity
Date：2023-05-25
In her speech at the opening ceremony of the third dialogue of the China-Europe-America Museums Cooperation Initiative, Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO (2009-2017), highlights the significance of museums as more than just repositories, emphasizing their role as spaces for knowledge exchange, social connection, and fostering dialogue between civilizations. It recognizes the transformative impact of museums in China and UNESCO’s involvement in intercultural projects. Overall, her speech underscores museums as cutting-edge laboratories of shared humanity, protecting heritage, and promoting mutual understanding in a complex world.
Irina Bokova has been two terms the Director-General of UNESCO from 2009 to 2017. She is both the first female and the first Southeastern European to head the agency. Having graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Irina Bokova was a Fellow at the University of Maryland, Washington, and followed an executive program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. At UNESCO, Bokova advocated for gender equality, improved education and preventing funding for terrorism, especially by enforcing the protection of intellectual goods.
Full text of the speech
Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me particular pleasure to participate once again in this important Third Dialogue of the China-Europe-America Global Initiative on Museums this time focused on dialogue between civilizations. It has become already a well-established tradition that I congratulate that every year when we celebrate the 18th of May, which is the International Day of Museums, we get together focusing on different aspects of the role of museums in society. I think it is important because this auspicious initiative holds the key of many of the challenges today.
Museums nowadays are not just repositories for objects, but they are centres of knowledge exchange and social connection. Through the soft power of cultural diplomacy, museums are spaces to foster an awareness of our shared history and to transmit common values. These ideas resonate deeply with my experience as Director General of UNESCO.
Let me just remind that already in the 1960s, UNESCO launched the pioneering “Imaginary Museum” project, to increase access of the world’s citizens to art, through the reproduction of the world’s most famous paintings. UNESCO adopted then the first Recommendation dedicated to museums, to make them accessible to everyone, working closely with the International Council of Museums (ICOM), which was also created by UNESCO. But so much has changed since then.
In recent years, China has been at the forefront of the global transformation of the museum landscape. If in 1949, China had only 25 museums. Today, there are more than 5,000, acting as platforms for urban development, for social inclusion, for the quality of urban spaces, for reaching out to the others through dialogue among civilizations.
In recent decades, UNESCO has been engaged not only with supporting the ICOM, but investing in major intercultural projects where Museums have taken a prominent role – the Slave Route Project, museums as places of memory and reconciliation and last but not least among them, the Silk Road project. It has sought to better understand the rich history and shared legacy of the historic Silk Roads, and the ways in which cultures have mutually influenced each other.
In light of the enduring legacy of the Silk Roads in connecting civilizations throughout history, the UNESCO Silk Roads Programme, that started in 1988, today revives and extends these historic networks in a digital space, bringing people together in an ongoing dialogue and fostering a mutual understanding of the diverse and often inter-related cultures that have sprung up around these routes.
Let me add that the Silk Road project has a very rich legacy of movable heritage, displayed in museums along the lengths of these routes. I am happy to say that since 2017 these museums are presented and promoted by an online platform, connecting the historic cultural legacy of the Silk Roads from across the world – from Xi’an to Venice all the way through Bagdad, Samarkand, Balk and others.
Over millennia, the wondrous story of the Silk Road has been one of encounters between people, cultures, religions and knowledge. These encounters have shaped civilizations over the ages, catalyzing inventions, fertilizing intellectual scholarship. They gave birth to literary and scientific treasures, to traditions and artistic practices that have been passed across generations.
And all of this glorious story of human encounter can be found in the museums. They are places where people meet, where they come together to share ideas, to innovate, to learn more about their own history and culture, to learn more about other histories and cultures. They are places where we come together as one single community, showcasing the wealth of our diversity. They are places to wonder, to learn about the past and invent the future.
I see museums as cutting-edge laboratories of our shared humanity to protect our heritage, to catalyse new creativity, to help us find words and images to capture the complexity of our world and to understand the other. I firmly believe in the power of museums as forces to rejuvenate urban policies, to deepen social inclusion, to create jobs, to foster a sense of belonging, and to make the most of cultural heritage for all and to contribute to the mutual understanding in a complex world.
This, ladies and gentleman, is the spirit of UNESCO’s Recommendation concerning the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, adopted in November 2015, to promote the role of museums to foster the ideals of tolerance and mutual understanding. Recommendation recognized that “the preservation, study and transmission of cultural and natural, tangible and intangible heritage, in its movable and immovable conditions, are of great importance for all societies, for intercultural dialogue among peoples, for social cohesion, and for sustainable development”.
All these ideas were very well captured in the Congratulatory message of President Xi Jinping addressed to the UNESCO’s High-Level Forum on Museums as a follow-up of the adoption of the Recommendation, held in Shenzhen from 10 to 12 November, 2016, in which I had also the privilege to participate.
President Xi said: “Museums are cultural palaces that preserve and carry forward human civilization. Museums are bridges that link our past to the present and future. Their contribution to promoting mutual learning of civilizations in the world is distinctive and remarkable.” President Xi invited further the participants to build “consensus on how to bring back to life the diverse collections of museums and how to increase the global audience's access to them so that they can be instrumental to preserving the cultural diversity, to increasing understanding among peoples of the world and to advancement of human civilization”.
I believe these words have not aged a day. At the heart of our cities, museums are much more than cultural spaces to display collections. They are a place of constant dialogue within and among countries and knowledge about the incredible cultural diversity of humanity.
Thank you for your attention. And I wish you very successful deliberations.
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