First posted to my MuseumStudies blog on Tumblr yesterday (18 Jabuary 2011), this text draws the theoretical background to an in-depth risk assessment of MACRO's new Annex, opened to the public in Rome on 3 December 2010.

1. Museums - A Risk Assessment of MACRO’s New Annex in Rome:
Theoretical Premises
by Alessandro Califano
“Risks are manifold, risks are everywhere. In Cultural Heritage, risks represent a more or less
strong possibility of damage, or loss: of artefacts, contexts, even of human lives or, at the least,
their well-being. As Museum Professionals we are called to make a strong stand against risks,
and to avoid or reduce dangerous situations. But the best way to keep risks under control is still –
to know them.
This is the reason why risk awareness can be not enough. What we need to add to that is a proper
risk assessment campaign. Only a hands-on approach – one taking into account the diverse
contexts and the given situation in a museum, or in another cultural heritage related institution –
will allows us to collect all the information we will need to draw a proper, customized model of
the real, main risks involved at any given moment. We will thus have the basis upon which to
build both a “shelf list” of risks for internal use, and some guidelines for our public, or even a
general, effective emergency plan.”
With these words I introduced a workshop organized by UNESCO for an audience of Central Asian
museum professionals, focusing on risk assessment theory and practice in museums1. And indeed,
assessing risks - be it for built structures, people, or collections - means starting first of all to look
at things we know with different eyes.
This was the same fundamental principle we used in a much different, post-conflict context, where
participants to other UNESCO workshops2 had already witnessed to, and had learned of risks (and
damages!), often at their own, dearest expense, that the majority of museum professionals
operating in western countries but rarely encounter. And it was this very same principle that
allowed us to positively approach the issue … and to successfully discover some possible guidelines
to creatively and effectively reduce risks to collections, staff, and visitors.
1
“Risks and opportunities: difficult challenges for museum professionals”, Tashkent, September
2008
2
“Risk assessment and risk management”, Kabul, May 2009; Kabul, “Safeguarding movable
cultural heritage: post-conflict and post-disaster strategies for sustainable museum
management”, Kabul, May 2010

2. If we remember how important it is to provide focused storytelling in museums3, in order to re-
built the missing context around an artefact - sometimes hidden in its ideation or creation process,
or maybe in its subsequent history as an object, or in the association of images and thoughts it may
originally have implied and even taken for granted - we can’t but stress how vital it is to tailor our
storytelling to our diverse public. Ideally, in order to better place our collection (and the institution
hosting it) in the mind and heart of our audience, this should go as far as adapting storytelling to
everyone’s background, focus, and preferences.
Together with storytelling comes however accessibility: on a physical level, as well as for what
regards the full wealth of information a museum could (and therefore should) provide about its
collections. Physical accessibility and usability of the informative and/or entertaining content of
museums’ collections should be always kept in mind, as two sides belonging to one and the same
medal: adding value to our collections, and doing our part in preserving our common cultural
heritage as well as in disseminating the message it carries - be it movable or intangible.
This, in turn, implies that we can’t grasp and assess risks in museums to their full extent, unless we
are able to look at things with different eyes. Hearing or visually impaired people, people with
reduced mobility, elderly people or children, people recovering or suffering from the after-effects of
serious and/or potentially disabling or even life-threatening diseases, people with learning
disabilities, people enriched by a different cultural background. All these should be accurately kept
in mind [for an in-depth discussion regarding this theme, see “Shifting Definition of Access:
Disability and emancipatory curatorship in Canada” in the November-December 2010 issue of
MUSE, the Canadian Museums Association bi-monthly magazine] when assessing (and planning!)
accessibility to public spaces and to the information they are called to keep, protect, and
disseminate - be it at a museum, an archive, or a library.
[ Rome, 18 January 2011 ]
3See http://museumstudies.tumblr.com/post/1516083250/storytelling-at-museums-the-afghan-
knife