Heritance Calendar
Heritance BlogProject Profile: Alsace
AMLA, Association des Musées Locaux d’Alsace
Alsace, France
October 2007
O V E R V I E W
L’Association des Musées Locaux d’Alsace (AMLA) was created in 1979 with the joint support of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in Alsace (Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles d’Alsace) and the Office of Strasbourg Museums (la Direction des Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg). AMLA unites 90 museums, of which 31 have national accreditation ("Musées de France").
The goals of AMLA are the following:
- To provide information and training to museum leaders
- To promotes the museums in Alsace
- To share the collections of museums in Alsace
To realize its goals, since 1980 AMLA has organized 15 study trips (most of them abroad), 251 conferences and 16 days of training in conservation. AMLA has formalized a liason with the Alsace Museum Curators’ Association (l’Association des Conservateurs des Musées d’Alsace), created printed materials on the association’s museum and their collections and established a web presence at www.musees-alsace.org
W O R K S H O P O B J E C T I V E S
- To engage four AMLA museums in a self-evaluation with peer museums in order to find ways to do more for less.
- To teach the members of AMLA how to conduct self-evaluations in their museums, with the assistance of peers from other museums.
H E R I T A N C E A C T I O N S
Over the course of two weeks in June and July 2007, Heritance conducted four all-day workshops in four different museums in Alsace: Museums in Marmoutier, Riquewihr, Albé and Soultz. Over 35 members of AMLA participated directly in the workshops. The outcomes of the workshops were reported to all 90 AMLA museums.
W O R K S H O P O U T C O M E S
- Heritance wrote four final reports in French, one for each museum, with concrete suggestions made by the workshop participants.
- Heritance implemented a web-based project management system to share communications, planning and decision-making. The final reports are available on this site.
- Heritance wrote a letter on behalf of AMLA recommending that the regional cultural affairs ministry (DRAC: Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles) assist in the purchase a shared museum information system and in the training of AMLA museum personnel in the new system.
- AMLA has conducted research on museum information systems and narrowed their choices to three: ActiMuseoutilisé used by Musées de France, AthenoMuseo used by the regional parks, and Mobydocutilisé used by Musée de Barr. They have established a schedule of demonstrations and workshops for AMLA members to test the various systems.
- Subsequent to the workshops, Heritance’s Jean Bermon conducted on-site consultations to the Natural History Museum in Colmar (a building advisory) and the Museum of Kochersberg (a lighting plan). In both cases, the museums realized a substantial savings in money.
- As a result of the successful Heritance workshops, AMLA organized its own "Heritance" workshop in Offwiller, which resulted in a recommendations for feasible concrete improvements to the museum.
- At the October 2007 AMLA Board meeting, AMLA reported the outcomes of Heritance workshops and promised to solicit further updates during the AMLA member meeting in November.
- Heritance will serve as the project advistor to the Museum of Riquewihr as it moves forward with a proposed building renovation.
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