ICOM is pleased to announce the creation of a new International Committee: the ICOM-Disaster Resilient Museums Committee.
In the past few decades we have witnessed terrible losses of museums and collections due to human-caused and natural disasters. While we always need to improve disaster planning for museums, we must also work to integrate museums into national and international disaster risk reduction frameworks. The UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 acknowledge that preserving cultural heritage helps create more disaster resilient communities and helps speed recovery. Museum professionals of all disciplines have an important role to play.
As an International Committee, the ICOM Disaster Resilient Museums Committee will now be open to all ICOM members interested in disaster resilient museums and communities, greatly magnifying its outreach. The aim is to create a new space for members engaged in the emerging discipline of cultural disaster risk management, increase interdisciplinary collaboration across ICOM committees, and raise ICOM’s profile and collaboration with the international disaster risk management community.
The ICOM-Disaster Resilient Museums Committee (ICOM-DRMC) has been created on the occasion of the ICOM 25th General Conference in Kyoto to serve museums globally as an effective, inspiring, instrumental, and cooperative interdisciplinary platform about emergency preparedness and disaster response.
Interim Chair: Cori Wegener, ICOM DRMC Chair, ICOM US
Elected Chair: Diana Pardue, ICOM Executive Board Member, ICOM US
Board Members
Brian Daniels, Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, ICOM US
Yuji Kurihara, ICOM Japan
Ihor Poshyvailo, ICOM Ukraine