Amendment of Lithuanian Memory Institution Policy under the Global Transition in Museums

• In Event: Transformations and Challenges in Memory Institutions: Navigating Museums and Archives in the 21st Century

Abstract

In Lithuania, museums, libraries, and archives are grouped as "memory institutions" that culturally underline their national identity. Among these, museums are globally in a transitional stage of their social role, as demonstrated in the new definition of museums that the International Council of Museums (ICOM) approved in 2022. Hence, how do the transformations of international museums affect the Lithuanian policy on museums, which are also the instruments that undergird the country's national identity? The author compared the Lithuanian Museum Acts (Lietuvos Respublikos muziejų įstatymas) before and after the April 2023 amendments and referred to the new and old definitions of the ICOM. The result suggests that, as a broad framework, museums' positioning has shifted from object-oriented to citizen-oriented institutions. At the terminological level, there is a repeated emphasis on "diversity," "accessibility," and "inclusive," which follows the new ICOM museum definition. Besides, the acts before the amendment did not include these words, nor the older version of the ICOM museum definition does. While introducing global-standard keywords, the new Lithuanian Museum Acts also started to retain "citizenship" and "collective identity" to define Lithuanian museums' missions and social roles. Thus, Lithuanian museum policy accepted the transformations of international museums but also retained their policy. These findings are inevitable to understanding Lithuanian policy on memory institutions and strategizing national cultural identity globally.

Short Bio

Aya Kimura is an Associate Professor at the Department of Human Sciences, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Japan. Her current research project is primarily focused on digitization at Lithuanian museums in the post-pandemic period. She received a Ph.D. in Museum Studies from Ochanomizu University (Tokyo, Japan) and a master’s in Cultural Policy from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (Tokyo, Japan). Her recent publication is "The elements of museum digitization procedure: a case study of Lithuanian museums" (Journal of Baltic Studies (2023): 1-21).

Author

• Aya Kimura, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine