Museums and Tourists: Enjoying without Destroying



Museums and Tourists: Enjoying without Destroying

Dr. Hans-Martin Hinz

ICOM Executive Council

International Seminar

“Museums and Sustainable Tourism”

UNESCO Chair of Cultural Tourism

Buenos Aires 18 – 19 May 2009

1. Tourism – a world-wide mass-phenomenon: have the cultural actors missed the connection?

For a half-century now tourism has grown to be the third-largest economic sector worldwide, and in the meantime touristification has come to cover the entire surface of the globe – with the exception of those regions with unfavorable geographic conditions (Karlheinz Wöhler, Tourismus und Nachhaltigkeit, Politik und Zeitgeschehen, Berlin 2001). Touristic demand rose massively in the 1960s and has maintained its high level in the following decades as a result of the urbanization in the industrial age with its demographic, economic and social consequences, the rise of economic productivity with its ensuing growth of income and leisure time, and the development of greater economic and technical mobility.

This demand comes primarily from the highly industrialized and post-industrialized societies of the globe. Already in the 1970s around 80 percent of all cross-border trips were undertaken by people of the OECD member states of the time; with the political changes and the abandonment of state-guided and still limited tourism in the former socialist states and China this has only been compounded.

However, the development that 1970s theoreticians of post-industrial society predicted for the turn of the century (Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, New York 1973) such as a continued increase in productivity and the growth of leisure time and income, was not entirely accurate; the globalized economic and labor markets have created changed conditions.

However, if we can rightfully describe the decades of high volume in the industry as a “democratization of travel” because of the unforeseeably broad basis of participation, we should also keep in mind that despite the mass character of tourism, only in a very few countries more than 50 percent of the population participate. Moreover, the preponderance of tourist activity occurs within national boundaries. This is sometimes underestimated, but it also points to future potential.

In any case, tourism, as a part of leisure behavior, has become one of the ‘basic functions of existence’ of humanity as described by sociologists and human geographers since the 1970s (J. Maier, u.a., Sozialgeographie, Braunschweig 1977).

It has contributed to a significant expansion of the economic market in the destination areas – as a result of a two- to three-fold multiplicatory effect of the direct investments and expenditures as well.

Tourism decisively revitalizes the ‘valorization’ of cities and landscapes. In many states and regions it breaks down spatial and economic disparities and creates new jobs in structurally weak areas, even if they are to some extent only seasonal and often in the low-wage sector. For many states it has become the primary channel for the influx of foreign currency. Since touristic demand has also tended to work counter-cyclically during economic crises and in general only temporarily withdraws from crisis regions, it is considered constant and stable.

Tourism has shaped and influenced societies and cultural and urban landscapes. It is observed as well as experienced and its repercussions are explored socially.

- Thus since the 1970s there are professorships at many universities in the world for the analysis of tourism and the education of young academic talent, to say nothing of private professional education and development.

- For 30 or 40 years it has been quite common in many countries to have school curriculum units on the over-development of coastal areas or the repercussions of tourism in the Third World. Students have since learned how to plan travel under ecological considerations.

- For many decades private associations have established special programs for tourists to educate them about foreign cultures and critically examine tourist behavior.

- Political and administrative programs to encourage tourism have long been implemented and for decades now mechanisms for the environmentally friendly control of touristic infrastructure have been put into practice.

Thus it is all the more surprising that cultural organizations, associations and institutions only spoke up three or four decades later with recommendations and declarations on tourism, particularly cultural tourism – essentially in the late 1990s. Yet since then they have been intensively engaged and active in suggesting the most diverse corrections, such as concerning tourist behavior, the demand for greater justice, warnings about the burden of tourism and demands for sustainability.

The following is a summary of the most significant declarations and activities of the cultural actors:

ICOM

At its 1998 General Conference in Melbourne the International Council of Museums (ICOM) passed a resolution assigning museums a key role in the protection and conservation of culture, cultural diversity and mutual understanding.

Two years later an ICOM regional conference in Bolivia and Peru worked out a recommendation for a “Charter of Principles for Museums and Cultural Tourism” (Museums, Heritage and Cultural Tourism, ICOM, Paris, 2000) stating among other things that cultural heritage may not be allowed to become a consumer product and that museums should play an active role in heritage management.

Another regional ICOM workshop in 2006 in Cambodia and Laos on the same topic called for an improved partnership between the local cultural actors and for investing the profits of tourism into the protection of cultural heritage.

And several ICOM national committees and international committees held their annual meetings on this topic this year and in past years.

In 2008 ICOM and the World Federation of Friends of Museums (WFFM) passed a joint “Declaration for Worldwide Sustainable Cultural Tourism” that particularly emphasizes the ethical mandate of respectful interaction between tourism and the cultures as well as the preservation of the landscapes and societies.

This serves as one of the foundations for the annual topic of the 2009 International Museum Day, “Museums and Tourism”, and could provide a jumping-off point for further activities of the world organizations (icom.museum/2009).

Other museum organizations have also engaged in this topic.

ICOMOS

In 1999 in Mexico the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) passed the “International Cultural Tourism Charter”, which particularly emphasizes the preservation of the cultural past, the resolution of conflicts in terms of sustainability and the satisfaction and enjoyment on the part of the visitors.

A 2005 ICOMOS regional conference in Seoul, Korea passed “The Seoul Declaration on Tourism in Asia’s Towns and Areas”

WTO (World Tourism Organization)

The “Global Code of Ethics for Tourism” was also passed in 1999, in Santiago de Chile, by the World Tourism Organization, and was recognized by the UN General Assembly in 2001. The code focuses on basic rights of leisure time, mutual understanding, and respect for the cultures.

In 2004 a WTO Asian regional conference in Vietnam passed the “Hue Declaration on Cultural Tourism and Poverty Alleviation” calling for synergies among the promotional programs of those participating in tourism to help alleviate the poverty in the destination areas.

Moreover, the World Committee on Tourism Ethics of the WTO passed a resolution in 2005 in Dakar, Senegal entitled “The Responsible Tourist and Traveler” appealing to all tourists to be more conscious of how they conduct themselves when traveling (code_ethics/eng/responsible.htm).

UNESCO

In 2003 in Cuba the UNESCO enacted the “Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and Tourism”.

In the meantime, moreover, a series of regional cultural networks has arisen to deal with the issue of cultural tourism.

The European Cultural Tourism Network (ECTN) – sponsored by the European Union – has been holding annual conferences on the subject since 2003: in 2005 it enacted the “Cardiff Declaration on Cultural Tourism” focusing on cultural tourism in the regions of Europe – including the new member states – with the aim of prompting the European Union to develop long-term strategies to promote tourism for those living in the region.

“The Malta Declaration on Cultural Tourism” is the result of a EUROPA NOSTRA conference in 2006 addressed to European institutions highlighting the significance of tourism for the economy and societies of Europe and calling for the promotion of sustainable cultural tourism with a focus on distinctive regional characteristics.

The involvement and dedication that cultural actors have since brought to the table is impressive, but why did they respond so late to such a fundamental and global process only to then decisively animate the discussion at the internal level for a good ten years?

To answer this question we will need to look at the character of tourism, keeping in mind that cultural tourism is a part of the process.

2. The supply side of tourism

Tourism falls under the service sector and is considered a “clean” branch of the economy. Yet it is more than that. It also includes industrial production of a sort through standardizing the content of tourist travel, through organization and “serial production”. As with all new industries, demand leads to expectations of growth, to investment, to greater participation, affluence and revaluation, and to the development of regions or urban districts. This also includes the creation of new jobs, more income and increased tax revenue, a revitalization of the arts and crafts, and other cultural consequences such as the cultivation of languages, dance and music.

On the other hand, tourism also leads to speculation and undesirable developments and can deform natural and cultural landscapes and cities and their underlying structure.

The positive influences on the population living in destination areas are to be commended, but this can also have burdensome repercussions, as when residents are driven away by rising prices or the disrespectful behavior of tourists.

Moreover, there have also been conflicts between economy and ecology, resulting in corrective measures taken by economic and political actors involved in the industry.

Thus “Enjoying without Destroying” historically means first and foremost that corrective measures were needed to the “early industrial” repercussions of tourism in cases of overdevelopment or undesirable developments.

Local citizens’ movements, associations for the preservation of historical monuments, urban and regional planners, architects, sociologists and the political sphere have established measures for preservation and protection in many heavily touristic zones that transitioned the “founding years” of tourism into a “softer”, more environmentally friendly and socially responsible tourism. Preservation measures for landscapes and historical buildings such as in Great Britain (National Trust), coastal protection measures in California, changed building codes in vacation centers based on tree-height, e.g. or traditional forms of construction, alternative architecture such as César Manrique strove for on the Canary Islands, consideration of resource distribution such as in water use or successful land use administration – as seen in the development of the world’s largest pleasure resort in the ecologically sensitive central Florida, for example – have helped to better harmonize the environment and the tourism industry (Hans-Martin Hinz, Sozio-Ökonomische Bedingungen und Auswirkungen sowie Raumprobleme des amerikanischen Tourismus, Berlin 1985).

This all occurred long before tourism came into the view of cultural actors.

3. The demand side of tourism

Alongside the development of the supply side, the desire for change requires clarity about the touristic demand as well: people’s leisure time, travel and vacation needs.

Unlike in the pre-industrial era, when the upper class preferred certain travel destinations and the upwardly mobile social class followed them in socio-cultural imitation, in the industrialized world it is everyday stress that triggers the demand for leisure time. This produces needs that can most thoroughly be satisfied with travel and vacation, namely the reproduction of labor power, variety relative to day-to-day uniformity – the so-called suspensive phase – and the liberation from the bonds, rules and order of everyday life, also called the compensatory phase (Jürgen Habermas, Soziologische Notizen zum Verhältnis von Arbeit und Freizeit, 1971).

However, long-term studies reveal a change in travel behavior among tourists over the course of decades based on travel experiences – from purely physical recuperation to increased variety to social experience (Krippendorf, Jost, Die Landschaftsfresser. Tourismus und Erholungslandschaft, Berlin 1975, und viele andere).

This process of increasing expectations stimulates cultural tourism as well.

However, leisure behavior has to be differentiated according to everyday stress: when daily work does not meet the need for the development of one’s abilities, the probability of the worker compensating in his or her free time is rather small, since daily work structures carry over into travel behavior – and this holds for all tourists. Seen in this light, work and leisure time are not true opposites, since very often work structures continue to operate covertly during leisure time (Martin Osterland, Einfluss von Arbeitssphäre und Freizeitbereich auf die Verhaltensweisen und Bewusstseinsformen von Industriearbeitern, Bremen 1978, David Maklan, The Four-Day-Workweek, New York 1977).

Thus it tends to be the case that people with active pursuits in their work life also behave more actively on vacation trips, and people with more monotonous occupations act above all passively.

So while just “lying on the beach” and doing nothing is a reproduction of labor power, and “letting oneself be entertained” is a change, they do not necessarily represent a contrast to the tourist’s very uncreative day-to-day life. An intensive cultural sight-seeing tour can also certainly be seen as a covert continuation of more challenging everyday work.

The great absence of any needs of the many tourists who engage in passive vacation behavior – called “beach and sun tourists” by their critics – who in extreme cases don’t even care where they travel as long as their basic expectations are met, often goes hand-in-hand with the lack of engagement with their vacation surroundings. There is no significant appreciation or notice taken of the aesthetics of the space or the local culture, so it cannot be very critical. Ultimately it is the result of stunted expectations.

This results in the tolerance of touristic satellite cities, that are even fenced in like ghettos in some areas, as well as in the commodification and trivialization (German: Verrummelung) of the cultures in touristic destination areas, such as when cultural expressions of the local population are taken out of context and offered purely for the entertainment of the demand group, in hotel bars for example.

What tourists do the cultural actors and museums have in mind when they talk about “sustainable cultural tourism”?

Is it the traveler who looks at all the archaeological excavations as an “educational tourist”, thus living up to the norm “see a lot”? Is it the “beach and sun tourist”, who is rather indifferent to the area itself and only meets the norm “tan and have fun”?

Or is it the great masses of tourists who increasingly want both in a decades-long learning process of traveling?

Their demand for cultural and social reality occurs in atomized form, at least, in the search for the characteristic particularities of the region visited; this is what “Europe in five days” stands for, for example. And don’t many people visit the Louvre above all just to see one famous painting?

Can this fleeting observation of the cultural past contribute to greater knowledge, understanding and satisfaction, or does it just serve to reinforce clichés?

In third-world tourism the question arises whether the contact with the native population organized by the travel industry fosters greater international understanding or even friendship between peoples. Or does it just confirm prejudices, since the natives see the tourists as rich laze-abouts without knowing what the everyday life of these people looks like the rest of the year? And on the other side: won’t tourists just be confirmed in their prejudices upon seeing people with low standards of living? Moreover, doesn’t touristic (mis-)behavior lead to such negative repercussions as begging, criminality, prostitution, and corrode the authority of traditional group structures? Doesn’t it reinforce feelings of superiority or inferiority?

When the cultural actors who remained silent for so long point to the potential for correction, shouldn’t they demand the alternative people rather than the alternative vacation – the more open and informed traveler?

Shouldn’t we pursue the question of how people can distance themselves from the more superficial search for symbols and evidently deep-seated leisure norms? How is it possible to make room for the entirety of culture and nature, of both relaxation and appreciation? How can we avoid treating cultures like touristic commodities, so that understanding and satisfaction can grow on both sides and cultural transfer can occur?

What role could museums possibly have in this process? Can “learning leisure behavior” in the museum, in the broadest sense, be an operative goal of museums?

And how is it possible to reach tourists at all, who comprise such a heterogeneous group and are hard to describe monocausally?

4. Museums and tourism

The opinion has been voiced in some corners that museums and tourism have nothing to do with each other. Exhibitions on the history of local tourism in seaside or winter resorts, sure – but otherwise?

The mandates, functions and self-understanding of museums have traditionally grown from quite different sources. The historical development of museums gave them first and foremost a scientific function as the conservers of material and cultural heritage. Whereas in earlier centuries the work on and with objects aimed primarily at knowledge of the objects and the consolidation of academic knowledge, educational aspects took on greater importance in the course of the development of modern museums and the integration of the public. Since the 19th century these educational aspects have often been the decisive impetus for the founding of new museums. This holds all the more of the newly founded museums of our day, for memorials and for historical monuments, since teaching and supporting visitors and cultural integration have become important concerns of today’s museum work. Accordingly, the number of visitors are considered a criterion of success for museums – particularly for the museum patrons. Thus tourists are a very welcome and growing audience.

With the growing touristic demand, museums have doubtless become important points of attraction for cultural tourism in cities and also in the classic vacation spots on the periphery. Not all museums participate, but many of them bear touristic potential.

Another reason for the continually broader public acceptance of museums can be seen in the fact that they have confronted people’s changed informational needs and new demand criteria and adapted the content of their work.

5. The museum as a tourism factor

With their collections and events in the city and the country, museums help shape the image of the city or region. They have a positive image, so they promise economic potential when they are successfully marketed, bringing additional revenue, sales and jobs.

Besides this marketing aspect, museums are also significant elements of urban planning. This is not new in any way if we recall the establishment of national museums at prominent sites in the urban landscape, for example Wenceslas Square in Prague, Red Square in Moscow, Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the Mall in Washington DC, or the modern urban planning triangle in Canberra, where the Australian National Museum has found an outstanding site.

Today public investment in cultural institutions helps not just to enhance the value of central sites but also to revitalize neglected urban areas.

Thus after the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 the West Berlin senate transformed the neglected ‘blind area’ on Kemper Platz, near the sector border at Potsdamer Platz, ravished by the destruction of World War Two and the division of the city, into an outstanding cultural district comprising a series of museums, including the New National Gallery designed by Mies van der Rohe as well as the philharmonic and a state library.

A similar transformation was seen in the South Bank in London as the Tate Modern and other cultural establishments made the southern bank of the Thames into a city tourist attraction. The Centre Pompidou in Paris replaced the halls of the old Paris central market as a solitary building and completely changed the character of the quarter. The Shanghai Museum, one of the most important art museums in China, is the focal point of a radical modern renewal of the city center, similar to the museums of Tokyo’s new Midtown Center.

In port cities like London, Hamburg, Hong Kong or Liverpool new museums housed in old buildings contribute to revitalization, supplemented by modern cultural event centers, opera houses and theaters; in other cities museums are established in former slaughterhouses or power plants. This triggers a process of “gentrification” that rejuvenates the district when high-value real estate and service industries move in, but can also drive away less affluent residents of the district through increasing prices if there are no state counter-measures.

As in earlier centuries, the most renowned architects of the era are commissioned for new museum buildings, which imprint the cities with a modern, contemporary expression: Mies van der Rohe, Daniel Libeskind, Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, and I. M. Pei, to name just a few. Often the architectonic exterior is more famous than the content of the museum (Bilbao, Graz) and can produce additional touristic demand.

But also outside of cities more and more buildings where important historical events transpired or public personalities once lived are being made into attractive museums. Gardens and parks are being arranged as an expression of a particular epoch, galleries, open-air museums and botanical museums are being founded and former battlefields being furnished with exhibitions.

The principle behind eco-museums of taking the entirety of nature and culture into consideration has been gaining new significance and is increasingly the model aspired to, such as in Halong Bay in Vietnam.

In some places culture and museums are experiencing an unexpected commercialization boom, such as in the space between Qatar and Dubai. Oil wealth has given rise to modern urban landscapes where there was nothing, so to speak, for years – in the service of touristic commerce and beach tourism. New museums with more or less imported collections emerge to increase the attractiveness of these places and famous art museums from other regions of the globe set up branches for the new international tourism in this region.

When museums, historical buildings, archaeological sites and memorials first encounter tourism on a broad scale, they are often “threatened” by a high volume of visitors, or by improper treatment of the collections or behavior in the buildings. This also includes the aesthetic impact, such as the “furnishing” of the immediate vicinity with so-called “sights” in the form of billboards, souvenir stories and food-stands.

The overuse of cultural facilities and historical buildings such as palaces, castles, churches and country manors as well as archaeological sites affects above all the so-called cultural beacons described in travel guides or counted in the UNESCO lists of the cultural heritage of humanity.

Less well-known museum sites – and this holds for very many museums – see their potential for visitors as not yet exhausted. At these sites it is necessary to improve what the museums offer, such as the organization of the exhibitions, the service for diverse groups of visitors, or the public perception, accessibility, and marketing.

These museums try to improve the situation by networking with others, such as cultural institutions at their site or in their region or beyond these limits with other societal groups, educational institutions, travel and event organizers, tourism fairs and city marketing. The goal of the museums is to find a way to connect to cultural tourism and take part in it.

6. A new self-understanding on the part of museums

For a quarter century now there has been talk internationally of a museum boom and the people’s intellectual interest in engaging with culture and history. The numbers prove this everywhere, as in Berlin, where the number of museum visitors rose from 5 million in 1990 to 13 million today. Other examples would also confirm this trend.

The past quarter century has seen a wave of all kinds of museums being founded, particularly museums that serve the fields of culture and history.

In many places the state politics of culture have responded to societal changes and new needs by initiating the founding of museums with new conceptions. In the past three decades new national historical and cultural museums in Berlin (German Historical Museum), Tokyo (National Museum of Japanese History), Ottawa (Canadian Museum of Civilization), Wellington (National Museum of New Zealand - Te Papa-Tongarewa ) and Canberra (National Museum of Australia) have been conceived and established. They no longer frame history and culture in terms of a “golden past” that is meant to instill the visitors with pride as members of their nation – as the national museums of the 19th century did. Rather, they offer multiple perspectives on history and culture on an equal footing and framed as an international comparison, with a greater historical and political focus and using those means most particular to museums, the original historical artifacts.

Success has justified these institutions and the state politics of culture, since they have responded to the internationalization of everyday life, the processes of change in society such as migration or the different ways of dealing with indigenous societies, the globalization of labor markets as well as the weariness with politics. The wave of new museums that began in the 1980s has not ended yet: in Poland and the Netherlands, for example, new national history museums of this sort have recently been founded, there has been talk of doing this in France and Austria, and various national museums of the 19th century are adapting to the changed standards. Similar trends can also be seen in other branches of museums.

Since the mid-1990s sociological research as well as museology seek to analyze this trend with the theory of “reflexive modernization”, also called the theory of the “second modernity” (Rosmarie Beier, Geschichtskultur in der Zweiten Moderne, Frankfurt/New York, 2000). According to this theory, the current process of social transformation involves a detachment from the structures and values that shaped the modernity of industrial society.

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These “old” values include above all: unlimited economic growth and the belief in technological progress without any real consideration of resources and ecology, rigid class and group social structures, the labor conditions of a nation-state and a society of gainful employment, and dominant social forms of life such as marriage and household. The museums of the 19th century are to be seen in this context, almost all of which arose in the time of industrialization, the “first modernity” (Anthony Giddens, Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization, London 1994 and Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens und Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernisierung, Frankfurt 1996).

Today – according to the sociological analysis the search for present and future sustainable strategies for development of the earth is determined by growth limits, ecological problems on a global scale, the gloablization of the economic and labor markets, the increased significance of recreational and leisure activities outside of gainful employment, the receding significance of the nation-state, the dissolution of old bonds (marriage, household), and the loss of tradition along with individualization (economic independence, consumer power). This framework also extends to those new museums that offer more than just one image of the past and leave it to the visitors to weigh the content of the exhibitions and arrive at their own assessment and their own opinion.

Since the conservation of history and culture in museal form is seen as a cognitive and emotional counterforce to the real world of dynamic changes, exhibitions can meet the human need to balance out everyday life (Gottfried Korff, Lässt sich Geschichte musealisieren?, Museumskunde 60, Berlin 1995). Thus museums meet a leisure demand that ultimately profits cultural tourism as well: museum visits as an enjoyment at a distance. Museum visits have taken on the character of a souvenir store of world history for cursory travelers, and for more serious ones that of a secular pilgrimage; and for all visitors an intensive engagement with the content offered by the museum can mean a certain amount of exertion during their leisure time. This bears a lot of potential for museums for work with.

The exhibition concepts of education, critique and multiple perspectivity are very much intended to strengthen personal identity. Yet they are also corrosive of identity, since they break up narrow or one-sided views, which should in turn generate certainty and self-assurance at a higher level of reflection.

If in the future this becomes the basic mode of operation for the worldwide medium of the museum, then individuals, societies and social groups will be able to register how the perceptions of others can deviate from their own perception. This could lead to the emergence of a collective, even global culture of memory, a global cultural memory. In this way museums would provide a positive contribution to globalization.

For a while now the more exacting standards of museum visitors have met with a touristic demand that is increasingly sophisticated. This has broadened the points of contact between culture and tourism, which explains the attention that the cultural sector now devotes to tourism after decades of delay – only after the cultural institutions, the museums, themselves became part of the tourism “industry”.

7. Sustainable cultural tourism. What is to be done?

What was defined 30 or 40 years ago as a soft, environmentally friendly and socially responsible tourism has since developed into the search for a sustainable form of tourism, of cultural tourism.

This entails a vague ideal type of the supply side and of the demand side of tourism. The aspiration for a new form of justice among those participating in tourism is at this point still just an approach.

International organizations such as the UN and the World Tourism Organization have made an essential contribution to the search and sponsorship of changed behavioral norms with their “Global Code of Ethics for Tourism” (1999/2001), which recognizes the right to leisure time and travel, calls for respect and mutual understanding, and emphasizes the consideration for other cultures and the environment.

With its Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001), Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and Tourism (2003), Convention for the Preservation of World Intangible Heritage (2003) and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005) the UNESCO has decisively prepared the field for sustainable cultural tourism.

In its Cultural Tourism Charter of 1999 the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) referred to the dynamic interdependency between tourism and cultural heritage and the necessary protection of nature and cultural monuments and urged long-term solutions in cases of conflict. Tourists are asked to show respect for the culture of the destination area by conducting themselves like welcome guests.

After several years of engagement with the issue of tourism and the decision of ICOM to hold the 2009 International Museum Day under the heading of “Museums and Tourism”, the museums of the world and the ICOM national and international committees are called on to frame the issue in a broader context.

The International Museum Day offers a suitable platform for this, since it integrates visitors and the public. Museums all over the world offer activities on this topic to reinforce the public awareness for sustainable cultural tourism.

These are favorable conditions for an engagement with the significance of cultural tourism above and beyond this one day.

Museology, as the specific science of the field, will bring the associated societal processes to bear on the theory, as it has in the past. This could lead to an expanded definition of the museum that describes the influence of tourism on nature and culture as a worldwide phenomenon and identifies the necessary sustainability strategies from the perspective of the museum. This concerns ethical values and the new norms of collective behavior to be aspired to (Tereza Scheiner, Heritage, Museums and Cultural Diversity, Rio de Janeiro, 2008).

The 2008 ICOM-WFFM declaration for a “Worldwide Sustainable Cultural Tourism” focuses on the tourist as the agentive person and calls for an ethical consciousness through action with real consequences for the behavior towards others, at the destination sites and in the space itself, and in general in the tourist’s attitude toward the cultural past and present.

In the year 2005 the World Tourism Organization (WTO) had already made a direct appeal to the affected persons in its declaration “The Responsible Tourist and Traveler”: “Dear Traveler...”. This declaration contains the following demands among others: “Open your mind ...”, “Respect human rights...”, “Help preserve...”, “Respect cultural resources...”, “Inform yourself about the destination...” and “Learn as much as possible...”.

ICOM is able to go beyond this appeal, since museums have direct and immediate contact with people. Its Strategic Plan 2008 – 2010 “Our Global Vision” sets the stage for this under the heading of ICOM’s External Environment in saying:

“Museums are recognized as integral partners in sustainable development, advocating a greater respect and understanding of the importance of heritage to the source communities”. (icom.museum).

The ICOM’s “Code of Ethics for Museums” clearly formulates the responsibility towards the collections and the museum’s employees, but museum visitors are given rather short shrift.

It is worth considering whether the fact that museums have an ethical duty to their visitors, including tourists, in their educational work should be given more weight. This would also represent a contribution to the UNESCO decade theme, “Education for Sustainable Development”.

This demand would also have to be addressed to the scientific faculty of the museums, since some learning processes would have to be introduced here as well.

It would be simple to formulate certain norms of conduct and learning goals for those who the museums reach. But unlike in school or university, in the museum only the short-term achievement of learning goals can be assessed with direct questioning, at best. Whether any sustainable learning has been accomplished can only be assessed at other places, if at all.

Nonetheless: museums are in a position to provide the impetus for learning, whether through exhibitions or other ways of involving people. Each institution has to find its own path to this goal, and many places will undoubtedly break new ground in doing so.

But can we imagine museum work producing the following insight among the visitors and tourists:

- When I travel – whether alone or in a group – I am a part of mass tourism and accept this role.

- People live in their own culture in the regions and countries I travel in. I want to learn more about this before, during and after my travel. I will adapt myself to the customs in the area I visit.

- I will not emphasize my role as guest, but rather search and ask questions.

- I am open to foreign customs and to other daily rhythms and ways of life.

- I am aware that the people in the area I visit live from tourist revenue. I will conduct myself with respect.

- I will take the time for observation and personal encounters.

- I will be critical in my purchasing habits and make sure that they are not tied to any exploitation.

- I respect the cultural assets and the natural landscapes in the area I visit and act with consideration for them.

- Museums and other cultural institutions clearly convey to me the past and culture of a region – not only on trips but in the rest of the year as well.

- I recognize the cultural diversity and the history of the people and see this as an enrichment.

8. Summary

Let us look into the future. Museums and tourism will continue to take greater cognizance of one another, since both sectors register a trend towards more sophisticated expectations. If cultural institutions can contribute to achieving a corresponding sustainable impact, they will have performed a significant service to society, since they will have helped realize the principle that is important for the future of all of us: Enjoying without destroying.

Latin America plays a very important role in the process of integrating cultural questions in the context of tourism. If we look at where the important documents on cultural tourism have been discussed and enacted, it is Mexico City and Santiago de Chile, Cuba, Peru and Bolivia, as well as Buenos Aires with this conference on the occasion of the 2009 International Museum Day.

Thank you for your attention.

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