“As a board member, I hope to meaningfully contribute to museums both locally and internationally,” says Dr Sian Tiley-Nel, Head of the UP Museums, who has been nominated yet again as a board member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM)- South Africa.

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) was formed in 1947 and is the world’s largest organisation of museums and museum professionals. Dr Sian Tiley-Nel, Head of the UP Museums, will once again sit on its board of directors. She tells Tukkievaria more about her role there.

What are the core functions/offerings of ICOM-SA?

ICOM is committed to promoting and protecting both natural and cultural heritage, present and future, tangible and intangible, across the globe. With 45 000 members in 138 countries and territories, ICOM is a global network made up of museum professionals from a wide range of museum and heritage-related disciplines. ICOM-SA specifically represents the International Council of Museums in South Africa and is one of 114 national committees established by ICOM in Paris. It is dedicated to providing support to South African museum professionals in integrating the wider ICOM network and its vast resources, and addressing common issues of museum practice in South Africa. These current issues in museology relate to decolonisation, restitution, repatriation, the definition of the word “museum”, sustainability, the social role of museums, culture at the heart of COP27, and climate change matters, among others. Increasing the visibility and representation of university museums in Africa to the global museum community is critically important.

You were re-nominated as a member of the board of directors. Tell us more about this role.

This is my second nomination to the board, having served a previous term in 2019. It is indeed an honour to represent the University of Pretoria (UP), be able to contribute to museums within South Africa and add more to the much-needed African voices within museology.

My first appointment to the board came at a critical time, when the new definition of the museum had to be voted in, in Kyoto, Japan in 2019. The definition of a museum had not changed in 40 years. Japan was contentious, but a few years later, in 2022, a unanimous vote of over 4 000 museum professionals finally adopted a 21^st-century definition of a museum. It's not perfect, but a start, and recognises “a museum as being not-for-profit and in the service of society” at the core of its definition.

Being part of this process as a board member, hoping to make a difference, and meaningfully contribute to museums both locally and internationally is very much part of my professional role within UP. ICOM is an NGO that is dedicated to museums, yet also maintains a formal relationship with UNESCO – both have made major impacts on museums across the world and offer valuable benefits from training opportunities and research collaborations and, yes, networking is critical to enabling the UP Museums to have a global footprint with some of the best museums in the world. 

What are the responsibilities of being a liaison academic? 

The ICOM-SA board assigned the portfolio for academic liaison because no previous positions came from within academia or from an opportunity within university museums specifically. During lockdown and the COVID-19 pandemic, I formed the first sub-committee, called University Museums and Collections of South Africa (UMAC-SA), aiming to get as many higher education museums, collections and archives onto a collaborative global network. We have grown, and have a list of about 60 individuals; membership to ICOM-SA is encouraged for all top universities in South Africa, as not all are members. I am trying to shift the status quo. Governance, ethics and legal compliance are at the forefront of any world-class museum and professional affiliation, which, in practice, benchmarks one museum from another.

This year I was also nominated to the international UMAC Board and thus share the academic liaison portfolio with ICOM-SA. UMAC is the international committee for university museums and collections of ICOM. It is an international forum for all those working in, or associated with, academic museums, archives, galleries and collections. UMAC is the global advocate for higher education museums and collections of all disciplines, and is unrivalled.

My responsibility is to promote both the ICOM-SA mission and the UMAC’ mission for university museums to contribute to their society and community. This cultural advocacy is for the benefit of all, by sustaining the continued development and support of university museums and collections as essential resources devoted to research, education and conservation. UMAC fully upholds the values and principles enshrined in the ICOM Code of Ethics (2013) and the Magna Carta Universitatum of Bologna 1988.   

What new developments are you planning and why?

ICOM-SA has yet to develop a formal strategic plan for the full term, and responsibilities are usually aligned with ICOM focus areas and support global positioning. A critical key area is to grow a stronger university membership base in South Africa and connect with more ICOM committees on the continent.

We recently planned a webinar where the President of ICOM, Emma Nardi of Italy, and the Vice-President, Terry Nyambe of the Livingstone Museum in Zambia, addressed a South African cohort. This was a purely South African initiative, as ICOM has never addressed African museum professionals directly before. Online meetings have enabled this open communication opportunity and revolutionised contact across the world. The new board remains committed to promoting wider awareness about the efforts, strong ethical foundations and expansive research resources that ICOM provides to museums worldwide, and the accessibility of these resources to the African continent is high on the agenda. Part of the responsibilities is to build up South African webinars around discussions of “decolonisation” as a verb.

How does UP benefit from ICOM-SA? 

The UP Museums have been members in good standing of ICOM for nearly two decades. University museums fall outside the ambit of South African legislation as they were not considered in the Cultural Institutions Act of 1997, and there is no law or proper governance structure to guide university museums and collections. Out of a need for good governance and in recognition that UP holds responsibility for artworks, items, and archives of local and global cultural and natural heritage on behalf of the nation, this is significant and an often-ignored factor. This is why the UP Museums are leaders of museums in higher education in South Africa, and why we play an active role in ICOM and serve as a university museum for other university collections.

Not all universities are committed to their cultural and natural heritage, and few have dedicated museums with permanent collections. ICOM recognises that the role of university museums is not only teaching, education and research, but also serving as ambassadors for our institution’s culture. The UP Museums are also members of the International Council of Museums Conservation Committee (ICOM-CC) – collectively, the ICOM, UMAC and ICOM_CC professional affiliations enable, grow, protect, and add value and impact to the UP Museums.

Growing our reputation, benchmarking our curatorial, archival and conservation practices is at the core of strategic functioning of the UP Museums. We actively uphold the Code of Ethics on all matters pertaining to museums and are proud to be members. My extension as a board member merely elevates the importance of the UP Museums and their global footprint.

How can the UP Museums attract tourists with its history?

The UP Museums have a deeply entrenched history and serve as curators of its most prized permanent collections, not only for the institution but also for the nation. Increasingly, and in recent decades, with a lot of dedication and hard work from the UP Museums, serving as university museums as well as public museums has become part of our social responsibility.

For over a decade, we have become a major tourist attraction in Gauteng, voted as the top-10 must-see museums and recently number four by MuseumExplorer. While our main mission is to serve the UP community first, we have a civic duty to be open, accessible and inclusive to all communities and the wider public. This includes both domestic and international tourists. Tourism contributes more to the economy of South Africa than the arts and cultural heritage sector. From students, staff and visiting scholars to foreign tourists, Hatfield campus is fast becoming a major tourist destination – this was an idea that the UP Museums tapped into years ago and is one of the reasons for our success. Our strong professional affiliations, such as with ICOM-SA, and unique ability for university museums to cut across disciplines together with a consistent and strategic outlook on everything we do, why we do it and how we do it, we have built up a good, solid reputation for the UP Museums and placed UP on the global museum map.