The annual International Museum Day is around the corner. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) announces “Museums as agents of social change and development” as the theme for International Museum Day 2008, to be celebrated the week of Sunday, 18th of May in museums throughout the world.

May 18 is International Museum Day. On this day, museums all over the world organize various promotional activities and commemorative events, to attract more people to getting know museums and to fulfill their social functions better. It has been recommended that this celebration be held each year in the spirit of the motto: “Museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, co-operation and peace among peoples.”

International Museum Day has been celebrated all over the world since 1977. Each year, a theme is decided on by the Advisory Committee. The event provides the opportunity for museum professionals to meet the public and alert them to the challenges that museums face if they are to be - as in the ICOM definition of museums – “an institution in the service of society and of its development”.

China will join in the celebration by announcing free entrance into several of the biggest museums and galleries in the country, most of them were in the capital Beijing, including the Capital Museum, the Beijing Museum of Art, and the Military Museum.

Origins of International Museum Day

The word “museum” is originated from the Greek word “museion”, which means “the place for worship Muse”. In Greek mythology, the Muses are a sisterhood of goddesses or spirits, their number set at nine by Classical times, who embody the arts and inspire the creation process with their graces through remembered and improvised song and stage, writing, traditional music, and dance, covering all the humanity activities in Greece then.

Around the 5th century, in the Olympus shrine of Greek, a treasury that store various of statues and booties, seen as the first museum. In a long period followed, museums were only a form as collection room for royal family and few rich people. The modern museums began to appear in the last half of the 17th century. In the 50s of 18th century, the British Museum was founded and first opened to the public, becoming the first large museum opened to the whole world. From the end of that century, some of Western European countries founded their national museum one after another, and opened to the public. This movement pushed a new development of museums’ functions, and people’s opinions toward museums changed a lot. Together with the development of social cultural, science and technology, the amount and kinds expanded quickly.

ICOM is the international organization of museums and museum professionals which is committed to the conservation, continuation and communication to society of the world’s natural and cultural heritage, present and future, tangible and intangible. It was founded in Paris in 1946. In 1974, in the 11th conference of ICOM in Copenhagen, museum was defined as “a permanent institution that does not pursuit of profit, and serves for the development of society, making collecting, conserving and researching those witnesses of human history their responsibility, in order to show to people for study, educate and enjoy”. In this conference, ICOM designated May 18 annual International Museum Day as a way to enhance mutual understanding and cultural exchange, and would announce a theme every year.

World’s top museums

Louvre Museum

Located in Paris, the Louvre is one of the largest palaces in the world and, as a former residence of the kings of France, one of the most illustrious. It exemplifies traditional French architecture since the Renaissance, and it houses a magnificent collection of ancient and Western art. First opened to the public in 1793 the Louvre claims to be the world’s largest museum, with over 35,000 pieces of art housed in a gigantic, 60,000 square foot building. Its collection of Egyptian antiquities is one of the finest in the world.