Visitors view artifacts at Ninh Binh Provincial Museum (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Museums in Vietnam will hold various activities to celebrateInternational Museum Day on May 18, following plans by the InternationalCouncil of Museums (ICOM), according to a document recently issued by theculture ministry's Department of Cultural Heritage.
This year, ICOM chose the theme Museums for Equality: Diversity and Inclusionto honour the diversity of the museums and their staff.
With this theme, ICOM encourages museums worldwide to collaborate to create acommon connection between the future and tradition. At the same time, ICOM alsoencourages museums to introduce their activities to the public under specificinstructions that can be found athttp://imd.icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2020/01/IMD-2020-kit-EN.pdf.
Some of the major goals that ICOM aims at include: advocate for museums as keyactors in societies, empower diversity and inclusion in cultural institutions,promote cultural exchange as a catalyst for peace among peoples and implementthe UN Sustainable Development Goals.
However, during the pandemic and social distancing period, ICOM has alsoprovided guidance to museums to promote the creativity and value of thecollections by utilising social media, like diversifying ways of introducingartefacts on the internet, building contents for their social networks, sharingbeautiful photos of the artefacts or collections of special values andlaunching programmes of introducing cultural heritages on television and radio.
Based on the orientation of ICOM, museums in Vietnam will coordinate to conducta number of activities that include focusing on research, developing content tointroduce 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 digitalmedia content on social networks and applications, the museums will coordinatewith the education sector to introduce cultural heritages, particularlyintangible ones, to the students by combining such introductions with thelearning programmes.
Established by ICOM since 1977, International Museum Day has been held yearlyto increase public awareness of the role of museums in the development ofsociety, and it has been steadily gaining momentum ever since.
Last year, over 40,000 museums held special events in some 150 countries andterritories, with the support of 78 ministries of culture around the world./.
VNA
