of the 20th century, the concept of museum science appeared in Swedish in the Nordic Encyclopaedia (Ekström 2000, p. 31). At the time, the word referred to the acquisition of objects, their preservation and cataloguing. Later the termi- nology has changed not only in Sweden but all over the world, but unfortunately not in the same way and at the same pace. The German Museum Science (e.g., the Institut für Museumskunde in Berlin) only around 15 years ago changed to museum research (Museumsforschung), while in France and in many other countries the term museology has been used for more than a century. In Swe- den, the term museology was adopted in the 1970s in line with the international development of the discipline.
Over time, the subject has expanded to cover not only research in the museum, but also research on the museum – the museum as a political, philosophical and social phenomenon. “The ‘museum-ness’ of museums, then, is a subject that needs to be addressed and theorized in its own right” (Fyfe & Macdonald 1996, p. 6). They continue:
Museums are a fertile theoretical field precisely because they can be tackled from a range of theoretical perspectives which cross many of the established divisions of the disciplines (e.g., production and con- sumption, knowledge and practice, sacred and secular). They are like a kind of theoretical thoroughfare; a place where unexpected meetings and alignments may take place.
The shift in perspective and the depth of the subject largely follow the changes that took place in the museum’s social role and position. However, research on museums is as complex and difficult as the museum’s social and political role in society. There is a fairly large paradigmatic and terminological confusion re- garding definitions, contents and research objectives in the field. In fact, much of the theoretical debate on museology’s objectives since the 1970s has been about the question of what museology is, and this has by no means been resolved.
The development of museology can be tracked from the museum science/museum knowledge of the 19th century through many phases, all the way to a philosophy of museums (Deloche 1999), which theoretically discusses not only the museum’s institutional whereabouts and the realisation of museums as phenomena and ideology, but also our existential relationship to time and material heritage.
Compared to modern historiography, which started more than 200 years ago, museology is much younger, 80–100 years, depending on how you measure it. If you count from the first statements of Museumskunde in Germany, the subject is almost 120 years old, but if you start from the coinage of the term museology, we end up in the 1920s.
The oldest museological school in the world is, as far as I know, the École du Louvre, founded in 1882 and still operating (Maroevic 1998, p. 93; van Mensch 1992, p. 89). The training was at the beginning of a practical nature, focused on the skills needed for working in a museum. In the case of the Louvre this
mainly concerned art museums. Today it is a discipline characterised by a broad definition of both theoretical and practical museology.
In the early 1900s, debates about museums and the need for education and research in the area were going on in various parts of Europe. The German magazine Zeitschrift für Museumskunde was founded in 1905 to promote and discuss museological issues, and in its first years called for university-level courses (Leisching 1905, pp. 91–96; Kniescheck 1998, p. 71). Between 1909 and 1912 such courses took place in Saxony. These dealt with museum discourse in general, but also with technical, conservation and scientific issues, as well as museum didactics and pedagogy. As early as 1903, talk of the museum as a popular educational institution was well established in Germany, and in 1920 the Museumskunde was established to teach, among other things, museum pedagogy as an academic discipline at the University of Bonn (Kniescheck 1998, p. 72).
In the years around 1920, a lot happened in this area. In 1921, an academic course in museology was given at Harvard University under the title Museum Work and Museum Problems, which some, incorrectly, have counted as the world’s first museology course (Gob & Drouget 2003, p. 13). The first professorship in museum science was established at the University of Brno in 1922 and served with some interruptions until 1948. The same chair was then revived in 1963 by Jiri Neustupný, and has remained as one of the leading museological centres to this day.
In England, the British Museum Association has organised museological, or rather museographical courses since 1932 (Maroevic 1998, pp. 93–94). During the first quarter of the 20th century, the first scientific studies were made on the museum, its functions, collections and preservation principles. There were also smaller studies on, for example, the difference between museums’ identities and functions (Lauffer 1907). In 1934, the first international museological conference took place in Madrid, organised by the L’Office international des Musées, the predecessor of the ICOM, International Council of Museums. The topic was museum architecture and what today is called museum management (Gob &
Drouget 2003, pp. 11–12).
In England, where Museum Studies in the University of Leicester, founded in 1966, is the leading museological centre, the focus of interest has remained on the museum’s role as a knowledge bank and intermediary of research. The em- phasis is therefore put on visitors, exhibitions and pedagogy. The same situation can be seen in the USA, with the Smithsonian Institution at the forefront. In the German- and French-speaking areas, however, research has increasingly shifted to theoretical and philosophical studies of the museum as a social phenomenon, its historical and narrative relevance and the exhibition medium itself.
Is there any agreement, on an international level, as to what kind of museology there is at different institutions, and whether museology is considered a science or not? Just as the historiography of the 19th century debated whether history was a science or an art, and in the end reluctantly acknowledged it as a science
with scientific methods, many researchers and professionals in the museum and heritage field question today whether museology is a science at all, and what its real value might be.