For those of you who are members of ICOM (International Council of Museums) - there's a feature about the evaluation training I delivered for ICOM Croatia and Muzeoforum (Slovenian Museums Association) in the August ICOM e-news.
Here in the UK, the Museums Association's Museums 2020 consultation is taking place - what should museums be like in 2020? Amongst other things, I think they should be repositories for former technologies - the knowledge about techniques, equipment and machinery which is now "outdated". We might well need those technologies again in the future. In the "Curious Case of ...." exhibition at the Hancock in Newcastle (part of Stories of the World for the Cultural Olympiad, curated by young people) is a wicker fish trap from the Caribbean. This traditional design had fallen out of use, but is now being used again as a sustainable method of fishing, as the young fish are too small to be trapped. We need to retain these examples of technology for when our current high-tech methods cease to be viable.