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International Committee for Museology

International Committee for Museology
Abbreviation ICOFOM
Founded 1977
Founder Jan Jelínek
Type NGO
Official languages
English, French, Spanish
President
François Mairesse
Website network.icom.museum/icofom

ICOFOM, the International Committee for Museology of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) was founded in 1977 at the initiative of Jan Jelínek, in order to promote research and theoretical thinking within the museum world. This committee became one of the most popular in International Council of Museums (ICOM). It addresses the study of the theoretical foundation that guides museum activities around the world or, more generally, the analysis of the different forms that museums can have. The committee includes several hundred museologists from all over the world, organizes yearly symposia and publishes, among other monographs, the annual journal ICOFOM Study Series, available online.

The work of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), begun in 1946, was based on much older programmes, specifically professional symposia, journals of national associations (Museums Journal, Great Britain, 1902; Museumskunde, Germany, 1905), and of course the work of the International Office of Museums, founded in 1926 by the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, located in Paris. A large part of the research which grew out of these associations, as with international committees, focused on objectives relating to concrete professional concerns. In 1968 ICOM launched an international committee for the training of museum professionals (ICTOP) at a time when museum training courses were gaining popularity, in particular in Brno, Czechoslovakia (1963), Leicester, UK (1966) and Paris (1970). On the other hand, the development of specific theories linked to the museum phenomenon – long referred to as "museography", which became "museology" after WWII – was not a research interest for most museum professionals. Nevertheless, this field was particularly interesting for some researchers and university professors, in particular in Eastern European countries, first of all Jan Jelínek who was director of the Antropos Museum in Brno and president of ICOM. The International Committee for Museology was founded in 1977 at the General Conference of ICOM in Moscow. Its first president was Jan Jelínek (Vinoš Sofka succeeded him in 1981). Since that date we can say that three generations of museologists have continued to pursue the work of ICOFOM.


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