Minister of cultural affairs Åse Kleveland

Welcoming address opening of the XVII general conference of the international council of museums

Stavanger, July 2, 1995

Your Majesty, Ladies and Gentlemen

I am delighted to see so many distinguished representatives of the museum community gathered in Stavanger ICOM. The topic of the conference, Museums and Communities, greatly interests me as a politician, focusing as it does on museums as community institutions, and on the functions and significance museums have for us as individuals and as members of society. The subject invites us to take a look at museums from the point of view of the role they play in the community.

During your stay here in Norway, you will visit a number of Norwegian museums.

In doing so it is important to bear in mind some of the historical events of our nation that are reflected in the Norwegian landscape of museums.

For more than 400 years Norway was a part of Denmark. Copenhagen was the capital of the union, and this is where museums, theatres, opera and national monuments were built.

The history of Norway is the history of a small people in the periphery of Europe, living a simple life strongly influenced by the elements of nature. Long, cold, and dark winters, more rock than fertile soil. A nation rich on natural resources but with bad communications. Up to this century people along the Southern and Western coast knew more about the last news from Copenhagen, London, and Hamburg than they did of the people in the inland districts.

Norway is still the most sparsely populated country in Europe with four million people sharing 325.000 square kilometers. No doubt Norway is more characterized by nature than culture. Or as someone said: "You have more geography than history".

The history of Norway is the history of a people with strong egalitarian traditions. We never had a nobility in this country so you will find that castles and impressive manors are rare to find.

Most peasants and fishermen along the coast had to struggle hard for their daily outcome, but they were free. They usually owned their own land and were their own masters. You will find that the quality of equality is still the backbone of our society.

In this you might find one of the reasons why the Norwegian people twice has rejected membership in the EU.

If you take into consideration our extremely dispersed population, combined with a deeply rooted ideology of everyone's right to enjoy the resources and benefits of society, you realize that the key word for the way we organize our society is desentralisation.

That goes for the cultural infrastructure as well. Most of it has been established during the last three decades. Let us take a look at the Norwegian museum-sector.

In Norway as well as in most other countries there are strong links between universities and museums. Natural history and archaeology museums in Norway are to a large extent attached to universities.

However, Norway has relatively few institutions in the areas of fine and applied art. The two national art galleries are among the few museums founded by the state. Our National Gallery was established by the Norwegian national assembly in 1836, and in 1987 modern art became the responsibility of a separate state-run Museum of Contemporary Art.

The first known open-air museum in the world was founded in Oslo in 1881 by King Oscar II. Scandinavian open-air museums represented a new development in international museum work one hundred years ago. This concept has in turn influenced the international development of the ecological museum. Since the end of the 1880s there has been a steady growth in the number of social history museums in Norway, most of them firmly rooted in local history. However, a weakness these museums have in common is the fact that interest has been limited to the building and farming customs of Norway's inland areas, giving first priority to the funding of museums focusing on industry, labour, and life in coastal areas. Museums are also being encouraged to give priority to documentation relating to contemporary and recent times. A final distinguishing characteristic of Norwegian, and also in fact of Nordic museums, is the strong element of public responsibility towards these institutions and the financial support given to them.

The publicly funded share of all museum revenues in Norway today amounts to an average of 75-80 percent, which in financial terms is about NOK 800 million annually. State involvement is a clear expression of a recognition of and belief in museums as valuable institutions in a process of development, where an important goal is the democratisation of information and knowledge.

I have been told that 90 percent of the world's museums have been created during this last half century, that is during ICOMS' life time. In Norway alone a museum-like institution emerges every six weeks. A number of them eventually aspire to museum-status, perhaps with national coverage.

But what does this tell us? My interpretation of this phenomenon is that this is a reaction to the pace of change people experience in their own lives. Entire communitites become unrecognizable, social and natural landmarks disappear. Ways of life that proved functional in the past are no longer honored or mastered.

Many people complain that a shortened time perspective prevents intergenerational dialogue and responsibility.

Perhaps in a small way, but still significant, museums are created to counter the pace of change. To make us less arrogant and more reflective. Museums by definition inspire a longer time perspective.

In a world that is more complicated than ever, our answers and solutions tend to be more primitive and over-simplified. The fact that we to an ever growing extent communicate with computers, with artificial intelligence, strengthens this tendency. There is less room for wondering, for hesitation, for doubt. The answer is yes or no. Right or wrong. What impact this will have on us, only the future can tell.

Museums have a clear role to play as institutions which promote dialogue, arenas where people can ask important questions regarding their own distinctive culture, illuminating the relationship of one culture to another, questions relating to one's experience and understanding of aesthetics as a vital element in society, and questions regarding the relationship between nature and culture.

But an affirmative attitude towards the value of one's own culture has to be balanced by respect and tolerance for the forms and expressions of other cultures, a respect for cultural diversity. The tragic events of the recent past, and during owr own times, provide frightening examples of how cultural identity can be used as the premise for and as the instrument of war and political persecution.

Right now, at this very moment this is exactly what happens on our own doorstep, in former Yugoslavia. This very morning bombshells were hitting what is left of the unique library in Sarajevo. What makes people attack ruins? The answer is that the warlords know that people with a history, people with a past, are hard to conquer, no matter how many you kill, torture, and humiliate.

Last week the city of Bergen hosted the UNESCO conference on World Heritage Cities. On that occation I met the Major of Dubrovnik, one of the cities on the world heritage list. He told me about the enormous challenges they face in a situation with vast destruction and scarce funding, and total uncertainty about the future. However, they were planning to rebuild the old marble fountain in the main square. And why? All citizens of Dubrovnik have a relationship to the fountain. They have played around it as children, washed their cherries in the fountain water while passing by, or rested old tired feet at the end of the day to the sound of the falling water. The fountain has played a part in the lives of generations. To enable people to believe in a normal life for generations to come, they need the fountain back where it used to be.

This story tells us better than anything else that without a past, no future.

Environmental problems are a key issue on the political agenda, both nationally and globally. Museums of natural history may therefore create an awareness and an understanding of ecological relationships and in documenting biological diversity.

I regard the museums as the most important cultural institutions in the years to come. In that respect, the fact that some 60 percent of Norway's population very rarely or never avail themselves of what museums have to offer, is a great challenge. Museums compete with a range of other recreational activities, and they need therefore more than ever to find engaging and exciting ways of getting their message across.

To Norway with its strongly desentralised cultural infrastructure the information technology is a blessing indeed. Finally our national cultural institutions will be institutions for the whole nation.

Archives, libraries, and museums look after bodies of material which both overlap and complement each other. In developing new information technology, it will be important to strengthen the cooperation between these institutions. Jointly they represent the collective memory of the nation.

In the light of this, there are grounds for questioning the tendency to specialise which we also see in the museum world, with institutions appearing which cover ever narrowing themes. We need institutions that regard it as their duty to point out inter-relationships in time and space, that can show that change and continuity are built into all forms of cultural development. Museums should play an important role here, and be able to renew and develop the positive aspects of the encyclopaedic tradition, which in its time provided the basis for the first public museums.

On behalf of the Norwegian government I would like to say how pleased I am to see so many representatives from the developing countries here in Stavanger. You represent countries with strong ancient cultures, but in your daily work you often face a serious lack of practical and financial means that make our challenges seem like luxury problems. Cultural diversity plays a decisive role in a sustainable global development. We are all responsible for the preservation of our own culture, not because it is more valuable than that of others, but because it is our own. Acknowledging this, the industrialized countries should take on the responsibility of contributing by economic as well as practical means, to the cultural efforts of developing countries.

As a small nation, Norway has traditions as well as ambitions as far as international cooperation is concerned. We need you, your competence and your friendship, and that is why we are so happy to see you all here in Stavanger.

I hope that this conference will prove to be a suitable forum for the exchange of knowledge and opinions, a forum for establishing contacts and for cooperation across national and continental boundaries, and an inspiration for developing better museums!

Good luck!