ABSTRACT
In 1996, Alpha Oumar Konaré (President of Mali, and a former President of ICOM) was interviewed, along with other former ICOM Presidents, for some personal reflections on ICOM’s first half-century of history. This was in preparation for the 50th jubilee celebrations of ICOM, in November 1996 – celebrated during a private gathering on a closed day in the Louvre, where ICOM had first assembled in 1946. Alpha Konaré focused on the importance of ICOM’s Code of Professional Ethics and stated: ‘[I]f we were to embody a single value, this [the Code of Ethics] would be the most important one for me.’ 1 Two decades later, as ICOM marks the 70th jubilee of its existence (in 2016, in Milan), ethics and the ICOM Code 2 continue to be central to ICOM’s existence and values as a world organization for museums. As Gary Edson emphasizes in his essay on museum ethics in Chapter 14 of this volume:
The authority of the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums cannot be over-estimated. It has been and continues to be the most influential standards document produced by any organization for the international museums community. 3
Today, there is an unprecedented interest by public media worldwide in ethical issues and museums. Ethical issues are no longer subjects for confined discussion in professional gatherings, academic teaching of museum studies, or seminars for those who work in museums. The professional conduct of museums has become mainstream news.