Article: David Styles | Image: © ICOM
The International Council of Museums has announced the creation of a new Disaster Resilient Museums Committee, designed to improve disaster planning for museums and amalgamate cultural institutions into global disaster risk reduction frameworks.
In the wake of a decade which has seen some of the sector’s worst losses of collections and architecture, ICOM has formed a new Committee to support museums and heritage sites beset by human-caused or natural disasters.
The organisation’s primary aim is to create a new space for those engaged in cultural disaster risk management and improve sectoral collaboration with the international disaster risk management community.
ICOM states the new Disaster Resilient Museums Committee will be open to all its members interested in disaster resilient museums and communities, a step it believes will expand its outreach.
The Committee was unveiled at the 25th ICOM General Conference in Kyoto; a fitting location given the prevalence of natural disasters such as earthquakes in Japan.
Disaster Resilient Museums Committee Team
The team leading the committee is comprised of:
Interim Chair
Cori Wegener, ICOM US
Elected Chair
Diana Pardue, ICOM Executive Board Member, ICOM US
Board Members
Brian Daniels, Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, ICOM US
Yuji Kurihara, ICOM Japan
Ihor Poshyvailo, ICOM Ukraine
The UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 both acknowledge that preserving cultural heritage helps create more disaster resilient communities and helps speed recovery – an effort ICOM is now actively seeking to support.
More information on the Disaster Resilient Museums Committee is available here.
