It Is, It Was, They Are, We Are: The Museum Definition as a Norm and a Collective Framework

The ICOM museum definition is widely accepted by museums and is also used as a tool for research into the history of museums. This external acceptance obscures the fact that the complete definition text is rarely filled by any one museum, rather it defines all museums. It can be argued that if all elements of a definition are only held by a minority of museums, the definition itself is possibly questionable. This paper argues that, in addition to the factual description of what a museum is (or was) or what distinguishes museums collectively, museum professionals increasingly claim space in that definition to professionalize themselves. The definition has been instrumental in defining museum professionals and in projecting what they think they are about.