Museums - A Risk Assessment of MACRO’s New Annex in Rome:

Theoretical Premises

by Alessandro Califano

“Risks are manifold, risks are everywhere. In Cultural Heritage, risks represent a more or less

strong possibility of damage, or loss: of artefacts, contexts, even of human lives or, at the least,

their well-being. As Museum Professionals we are called to make a strong stand against risks,

and to avoid or reduce dangerous situations. But the best way to keep risks under control is still –

to know them.

This is the reason why risk awareness can be not enough. What we need to add to that is a proper

risk assessment campaign. Only a hands-on approach – one taking into account the diverse

contexts and the given situation in a museum, or in another cultural heritage related institution –

will allows us to collect all the information we will need to draw a proper, customized model of

the real, main risks involved at any given moment. We will thus have the basis upon which to

build both a “shelf list” of risks for internal use, and some guidelines for our public, or even a

general, effective emergency plan.”

With these words I introduced a workshop organized by UNESCO for an audience of Central Asian

museum professionals, focusing on risk assessment theory and practice in museums1. And indeed,

assessing risks - be it for built structures, people, or collections - means starting first of all to look

at things we know with different eyes.

This was the same fundamental principle we used in a much different, post-conflict context, where

participants to other UNESCO workshops2 had already witnessed to, and had learned of risks (and

damages!), often at their own, dearest expense, that the majority of museum professionals

operating in western countries but rarely encounter. And it was this very same principle that

allowed us to positively approach the issue … and to successfully discover some possible guidelines

to creatively and effectively reduce risks to collections, staff, and visitors.

1 “Risks and opportunities: difficult challenges for museum professionals”, Tashkent, September 2008 2 “Risk assessment and risk management”, Kabul, May 2009; Kabul, “Safeguarding movable cultural heritage: post-conflict and post-disaster strategies for sustainable museum management”, Kabul, May 2010

If we remember how important it is to provide focused storytelling in museums3, in order to re-

built the missing context around an artefact - sometimes hidden in its ideation or creation process,

or maybe in its subsequent history as an object, or in the association of images and thoughts it may

originally have implied and even taken for granted - we can’t but stress how vital it is to tailor our

storytelling to our diverse public. Ideally, in order to better place our collection (and the institution

hosting it) in the mind and heart of our audience, this should go as far as adapting storytelling to

everyone’s background, focus, and preferences.

Together with storytelling comes however accessibility: on a physical level, as well as for what

regards the full wealth of information a museum could (and therefore should) provide about its

collections. Physical accessibility and usability of the informative and/or entertaining content of

museums’ collections should be always kept in mind, as two sides belonging to one and the same

medal: adding value to our collections, and doing our part in preserving our common cultural

heritage as well as in disseminating the message it carries - be it movable or intangible.

This, in turn, implies that we can’t grasp and assess risks in museums to their full extent, unless we

are able to look at things with different eyes. Hearing or visually impaired people, people with

reduced mobility, elderly people or children, people recovering or suffering from the after-effects of

serious and/or potentially disabling or even life-threatening diseases, people with learning

disabilities, people enriched by a different cultural background. All these should be accurately kept

in mind [for an in-depth discussion regarding this theme, see “Shifting Definition of Access:

Disability and emancipatory curatorship in Canada” in the November-December 2010 issue of

MUSE, the Canadian Museums Association bi-monthly magazine] when assessing (and planning!)

accessibility to public spaces and to the information they are called to keep, protect, and

disseminate - be it at a museum, an archive, or a library.

[ Rome, 18 January 2011 ]

3 See http://museumstudies.tumblr.com/post/1516083250/storytelling-at-museums-the-afghan-knife