RE-ORG News

SHARE-ORG is a competition to promote the creative use of underused museum collections in storage, after they have undergone a reorganization project. Once collections are better organized and storage areas made more functional, museums can use those collections in new and innovative ways – and THAT is what we want to hear about! With this competition, we are looking for the newest and most innovative ways to provide access to collections in storage.

The first RE-ORG workshop in Spain was held in December 2019 at the Victor Balaguer Library-Museum in Vilanova i la Geltru in Catalonia. It was conducted in the framework of the preventive conservation strategy developed by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya for 2018-2021, which in particular, aims at improving storage areas of the 114 museums in Catalonia. In this context, in November 2019, the Generalitat de Catalunya entered into a collaboration agreement with ICCROM to develop the RE-ORG method in Catalonia's museums

In the frame of a long-term national program RE-ORG Serbia, the first in the series of workshops is going to be organized in the National museum in Kraljevo (central Serbia), from 2-7 December 2019. The host museum will welcome 11 colleagues from 5 museums from the surrounding region, who will during 6 days learn how to reorganize a storage according to the RE-ORG method and apply that knowledge in reorganizing archaeological storage of the National museum in Kraljevo.

Five months after the successful RE-ORG workshop that took place in the Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia (Muzej Novejše Zgodovine Slovenije) in Ljubljana, RE-ORG Slovenia moved to its second phase. From 22 to 24 October 2019, a group of 11 participants coming from seven Slovene museums met again for another RE-ORG workshop to review and implement the storage reorganization proposal that was made in May 2019, based on the RE-ORG method.

ICCROM, CCI and the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation are pleased to offer the RE-ORG Method free download in two new languages, Italian and Arabic. More than 55 000 museums exist in the world, and typically 90% of their objects are in storage rooms. As collections grow, financial resources continue to dwindle, leaving museums struggling to ensure that their treasures in storage are adequately looked after and accessible

Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) organized a two-week RE-ORG workshop (5-17 August 2019) for training mentors at Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery, Vadodara. The collection of Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery is varied and comprises of Paintings, Manuscripts, Textiles, and Archaeological objects, Basketry, Ethnographic Objects, Natural History Collection, Wooden and Musical Instruments. The museum has seven storage rooms in different places in the museum that were reorganized during the workshop.

After the successful experience of RE-ORG Chengdu in 2015, ICCROM organized a new edition of RE-ORG China in Datong City, Shanxi Province. The Yungang Grottoes Museum hosted the two-week workshop (from 16-26 September), which benefited from the generous support of the China National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA) and the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage (CACH).

The two-week training workshop was part of the project "Preventive conservation and enhancement of the collections of the Manjakamiadana Palace at the Palace of Andafiavaratra" conducted by UNESCO at the request of the Ministry of Communication and Culture of Madagascar and funded by a generous contribution from the Government of Japan.

The National Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana has hosted RE-ORG Slovenia, organized by ICOM Slovenia. The first part of the training programme took place from 22-24 May 2019.

The 18th edition of RE-ORG began on 25 November in Kuwait, after the successful experiences of RE-ORG Chile in September, RE-ORG International Portugal in October, and RE-ORG Albania in November. Twenty participants from Kuwait and Oman are receiving training through this course, which will continue until 7 December.