I recently came across a copy of the report of Public Consultations on the PEI Museum System conducted by the Institute of Island Studies at UPEI - and the date struck me. Is is really 5 years since the report was completed ? And are we no further ahead ?
While 2014 has been held out as a hopeful year for a major "legacy project" to the commemoration of the sesquicentennial marking the 150 years since the Charlottetown Conference led to Confederation of Canada colonies into a nation - there are still no clear plans to move ahead on museum development, and with the expectation that someone else will pay - there seems to be a limited vision which is restricting the effort to raise funds locally along with the provincial government committing itself to play their appropriate role in funding the operation on an ongoing basis.
The mandate has clearly been given in legislation in 1983 to the PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation to be the provincial museum system of the province - but how can they move beyond the role of managing a series of historic sites and theme museums (which they do very well) - to tackle the role of operating a full provincial museum system. The mandate is wide covering all of human and natural history, but without ever having hired curatorial staff in the broad areas of natural history the mandate remains dormant decades after it was granted to the organization,
No comments:
Post a Comment