ABSTRACT
This article aims to explore new directions in analyzing ethical problems as a subject of museological training. The regular updating of approaches toward applied theories and ethics should be an integral part of the professional self-definition of museum studies programs. This self-definition and its regular actualization serve as an answer to important changes that have been taking place in the heritage field and in society as a whole during the last decade. By using the controversy about the removal of some works of art by the Iranian born artist, Sooreh Hera, from an exhibition in the Municipal Museum of The Hague, the validity of an ethics model that is under construction at the Reinwardt Academy (Amsterdam) will be analyzed. The article emphasizes the position of the professional when confronted with controversies, rather than theorizing controversy as such. After a short introduction about ethics as a basis of professionalism, this article will develop an argument for a new professional ethics based on the new relationship between museums and society. The Sooreh Hera case study illustrates the complexity of this relationship and the need to apply adequate methods of analysis in the teaching of professional ethics.
