Among the other topics that will be discussed are evangelising by educating through the Missionary Museum; the role of the Museum in the registration, conservation, promotion and appreciation of indigenous culture; the creation of mechanisms or processes for continuous collaboration and mutual growth; and the sharing of the best practices of each museum for mutual learning.
The meeting is an initiative of the Missions Sector, and takes place under the supervision of Fr George Menamparampil in his last assignment in the Sector, who explains: “This meeting will help us to deepen the educational identity and evangelising nature of all our museums and promises to be a milestone in the journey of Salesian museums in the world.”
Again, according to Fr. Menamparampil, it is important to integrate museums into the Salesian educational and missionary identity, underlining the need to update in the latest trends in museology and technology.
According to Dirceu Lonkhuijzen, Coordinator of the Don Bosco Museum of Cultures (MCDB) in Campo Grande, Brazil, expectations for the meeting are high: "We will continue the activities started some time ago, which have begun digitally and which we are now resuming in person".
Prof. Lonkhuijzen, who will also be accompanied from Brazil by Marcos Lima, Coordinator of the Museum of Salesian Work in Brazil (MOSB), says that the meeting will also be an opportunity to meet other people, professionals in the sector and their museum institutions: “It will be an incredible experience, days of great learning for all those who will participate in the meeting.”
The meeting promises to be a space for the exchange of ideas, the strengthening of collaborations and mutual inspiration between representatives of Salesian museums. The planned activities include conferences, technical visits to the museums and exhibitions at the “Casa Don Bosco”, round tables and moments of conviviality, all aimed at promoting the Salesian mission of educating and evangelising.
For the director of the Abya-Yala Museum in Quito, Ecuador, Nataly del Pilar, the event will be extremely important for Salesian cultural institutions and reports that her expectations are positive: “My hope is to be able to form the Network of Salesian Missionary Museums that will allow us to work on museology, museography, curatorship, dissemination and other museographic themes of our charism, which makes us different from other museums. It is an extremely important step and will allow us to learn from each other” he concludes.
