Museums in Vietnam will hold various activities to celebrate International Museum Day on May 18, following plans by the International Council of Museums (ICOM), according to a document recently issued by the Culture Ministry's Department of Cultural Heritage.
Visitors view artifacts at Ninh Binh Provincial Museum (Photo: VNA)
This year, ICOM chose the theme Museums for Equality: Diversity and Inclusion to honour the diversity of the museums and their staff.
With this theme, ICOM encourages museums worldwide to collaborate to create a common connection between the future and tradition. At the same time, ICOM also encourages museums to introduce their activities to the public under specific instructions that can be found at http://imd.icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2020/01/IMD-2020-kit-EN.pdf.
Some of ICOM's major goals include: advocating for museums as key actors in societies, empowering diversity and inclusion in cultural institutions, promoting cultural exchange as a catalyst for peace among peoples and implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
However, during the pandemic and social distancing period, ICOM has also provided guidance to museums to promote the creativity and value of the collections by utilising social media, like diversifying ways of introducing artefacts on the internet, building contents for their social networks, sharing beautiful photos of the artefacts or collections of special values and launching programmes of introducing cultural heritages on television and radio.
Based on the orientation of ICOM, museums in Vietnam will coordinate to conduct a number of activities that include focusing on research, developing content to introduce the collections and diversifying ways of introducing via short films, articles, 3D graphic images or applications of information technology.
In addition to promoting the communication activities and improving digital media content on social networks and applications, the museums will coordinate with the education sector to introduce cultural heritages, particularly intangible ones, to the students by combining such introductions with the learning programmes.
Established by ICOM since 1977, International Museum Day has been held annually to increase public awareness of the role of museums in the development of society, and it has been steadily gaining momentum ever since.
Last year, over 40,000 museums held special events in some 150 countries and territories, with the support of 78 ministries of culture around the world.