Highlighting the importance and purpose of museums

BY the 1974 definition of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), a museum is a “non-profit making institution in the service of the society and its development; it is open to the public, and it acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, as well as material evidence of man in its environment.

From the foregoing, it is obvious that the museum, especially in Nigeria, is a cultural establishment, whose primary responsibility is concerned with the collection, preservation and exhibition of both natural and cultural objects for the purpose of knowledge and education.

In the past, museum settings had been misconstrued and their philosophies misrepresented by people and scholars as well, especially in Africa. It is no gainsaying that, in the olden days, the museum was best described as fascinating, but fearful by people who had little or no knowledge of what it stood for, while scholars who were fascinated by the museum’s setting as resource centres of cultural and scientific researchers, made little or no attempt at examining its socio-cultural impact.

Generally speaking, museums all over the world serve a wide range of purposes. Because they are natural custodians of man’s natural and historic objects, they have equally become the custodians of man’s cultural heritage. As a result of this, museums have become firmly entrenched in all civilised and informed societies.

There is no doubt about it that museums are suitable habitats for collection, preservation and interpretation of objects, both natural and man-made, which are preserved in the museums. By so doing, they have become veritable sources of information on research and reference.

In addition to this, museums, as treasure houses of the human race, are equally seen to be repositories of cultures, histories and memories of a people.

Today, the attention being given to cultural facilities all over the world is as a result of the quest for international tourism and its concomitant economic benefit, which has resorted to the increasing demand for the establishment of museums all over Nigeria.

Further, museums, by their nature, offer formal and non-formal education to the public through various collections and knowledge, thereby giving a unique opportunity to interpret appropriately different names of objects displayed in the museums. Not only this, museums, unlike other media channels which often tend to dish out digested opinions to the public, offer more insight and reflections on historical phenomena and cultural objects as well.

As a matter of fact, museums, in the area of information, speed up the process of acquiring information because collection of authentic objects involves discoveries and it pulls together threads of what is already known.

Thus, museumscan be seen as reliable avenues for international communication in a multicultural and multi-linguistic world.

Museums are useful through their educational role of exhibiting cultural and natural objects, which depict the socio-cultural life of a people.

Museums remain the only institution that make use of objects as a universal language of communication. As a result of this, the museum has become an instrument of socio-cultural integration, andmuseums in Nigeria are using objects in their custodies to speak to members of the international community with a view to enhancing better socio-cultural understanding and offer more insight and reflections on its people.

Much has been said about the importance and purposes of museums in Nigeria, but for the smooth-running and effective management of this cultural institutions, it is hereby recommended to the Nigerian government that the budgetary allocation of museums must be encouraging and the staffers must constantly be motivated and well remunerated.

• Odunewu is of the National Museum, Ibadan.