On 13 September 2021, 19 staff members from nine museums in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines and Thailand met online and embarked on a seven-month journey to reorganize their collections in storage, under a joint venture of ICCROM’s CollAsia programme and the National Discovery Museum Institute (Museum Siam) in Bangkok, supported by CHA - Korean Cultural Heritage Administration.
Other partners helping to deliver the International Course on the Reorganization of Collections Storage in Museums of Southeast Asia include the Canadian Conservation Institute, the Belgium Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, the National Museum in Belgrade, and the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia.
The participating museums hold diverse collections ranging from visual arts to natural history specimens, archaeological and ethnographic items, musical instruments, and military objects. All have identified major issues with their storage.
A dedicated project team comprising teachers of the RE-ORG method and facilitators from the CollAsia network will work closely with participants and their museums over the project period to ensure they meet their goals and regain control of their storage.
The course is divided into two parts:
- Online sessions and distance-mentoring from September to December 2021, when participants will learn the RE-ORG Method, collect and analyze information about their storage situation and develop a proposal to improve it.
- Follow-up projects from January to April 2022, when participants will implement their RE-ORG proposal in their respective museums.
Through this course, a team of CollAsia professionals will apply the RE-ORG method to their own situations and will be in a position to advise other museums across the region, thus establishing lasting connections with museums committed to improving preventive conservation and access to collections in storage.