A roundtable discussion on the status of museums in the era of communication and technology was held in the conference hall of the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO on the evening of Tuesday, May 31st, 2022, with the presence of field experts.
The meeting was attended by Dr. Seyed Ahmad Mohit Tabatabai, chairman of the Iranian International Council of Museums (ICOM); Dr. Seyed Mohammad Beheshti, member of the National Committee of the Iranian ICOM; Dr. Yunus Shokrkhah, director of communications and media at the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO; and Dr. Muneer Khalghi, director of Iran’s International and Legal Affairs of Cultural Heritage and Tourism Research Institute, who all discussed the challenges the field of museums and cultural heritage could face in the future, alongside the emergence of new technologies.
Dr. Tabatabai spoke first, mentioning that the focus of the ICOM throughout this year is on the “power of museums”. Museums have recently been able to expand their reach and attract larger audiences due to their usage of new technologies and cyberspace.
As a follow-up, Dr. Beheshti emphasized how important it is for them to become familiar with the metaverse, despite the threats it possesses alongside the opportunities. The Internet has shown how it can make a museum’s collection accessible to people wherever they are, and this effect has the potential of becoming more widespread within the metaverse.
Dr. Shokrkhah said how visiting museums and interacting with the tangible evidence of a nation’s civilizations is best the way to know its people, therefore cyberspace should be regarded as a tool to achieve this goal, not the goal itself.
Lastly, Dr. Khalghi directed attention to the issue of ownership within the metaverse. Each museum owns the objects it’s in possession of, regardless of whether they are privately or publicly owned. Furthermore, Dr. Khalghi discussed how museums are large sources of information, and the economics surrounding their institutes must also be acknowledged accordingly.
