MUSEOLOGIST VERSUS COMMUNITY OF MEMORY. ATTEMPT AT DEFINING TERMS FOR THE SAKE OF LEGISLATIVE AMENDMENTS

The contemporary role of museum reaches farbeyond the traditional understanding of the institution’srole to be played in the preservation of tangible culturemonuments. It is currently a creative institution on variouslevels of man’s activity, a centre for continuous learning,community and creative hub of healthy social relations.Museums continue to cover with their interests newer andnewer domains of human activity, among which art andhistory remain essentially important, though not the onlyones. Traditional factual competences that we used to findin museums: a historian of art, a historian, an archaeologist,an ethnologist, continue to be needed, however farinsufficient. Today museums have a need of staff whorepresent a wide range of competences, both to work onthe ‘collections’, and on the intangible heritage as well ascontacts with the public. Today’s museums expect from the staff the competence in so-called 2nd grade history, namelythese who do not only identify and document the past, butalso explain what and why we remember from the past.Looking from such a perspective at museums, whoseactivity seems to be described in the Act on Museums of21 November 1996 (with later amendments), and in theimplementation regulations to the Act, the employeerelations require a prompt legislative intervention. Thedistinction of the staff of museums and around theminto ‘museologists’ and ‘non-museologists’ is todayunquestionably anachronistic and inefficient, impedingthe implementation of the tasks facing these institutions.Furthermore, the source of the name ‘museologist’ issought, and the analysis of the legislative contradiction inthis respect is conducted, while new solutions adjusted tothe social needs are provided.