The worldwide community of museums will be celebrating International Museum Day tomorrow.

This year’s theme is ‘Museums and Contested Histories: Saying the Unspoken in Museums’.

It focuses on the role of museums that, by working to benefit society, become hubs for promoting peaceful relationships between people. It also highlights how the acceptance of a contested history is the first step in envisioning a shared future under the banner of reconciliation.

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) established International Museum Day in 1977 to increase public awareness of the role of museums in the development of society, and it has been steadily gaining momentum ever since.

In 2016, International Museum Day garnered record-breaking participation with more than 35,000 museums hosting events in some 145 countries.

By choosing to say the unspeakable in museums, the theme of IMD 2017 looks at how to understand the incomprehensible aspects of the contested histories inherent to the human race.

It also encourages museums to play an active role in peacefully addressing traumatic histories through mediation and multiple points of view.

The ICOM-Malta committee, in collaboration with Heritage Malta, will tomorrow be holding an early evening event in which this year’s theme will be presented and discussed.

The event will be based on three short presentations, followed by time for the audience to discuss with the speakers. The three presentations will be:

▪ Myths related to the Roman Inquisition – presented by William Zammit;

▪ Contested ownership of artefacts with a special focus on the De Valette dagger – presented by Jeanine Rizzo;

▪ The representation of the George Cross on the Maltese flag – presented by President Emeritus Ugo Mifsud Bonnici.

The event will be held within the Salon at the National Museum of Archaeology (NMA) in Valletta tomorrow at 6pm and all presentations will be delivered in English.

The Victor Pasmore Gallery in Valletta will be hosting a gallery talk entitled ‘The  Uncollectable Artefact’ by artist Trevor Borg who will be discussing the realm of collecting as a form of artistic practice.

‘Uncollectables’ acquire meaning and value through the transformative process of art making, whereby new histories are produced and realities imagined.

Collection-based artworks imbricate non-taxonomic methods that evoke one’s curiosities with contemporary critical discourse and, from such an amalgam, new possibilities for meaning-making may emerge.

The talk, being held tomorrow at 6.30pm, is free of charge and entrance to the gallery is through Ġlormu Cassar Street (the road leading up to Castille Square). The Victor Pasmore Gallery is managed by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, in collaboration with the Central Bank of Malta.

This year ICOM-Malta reached out to museum curators around the island and invited them to select an object from their museum’s collections that best resonates with this year’s theme to display in a prominent place in their museum accompanied by some insight into its contested history.

Below is a list of museums participating with their chosen object and their contestation.

For more information about all the events and activities for IMD 2017, visit the ICOM-Malta Facebook page.