Set up by the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), the RE-ORG programme aims at museums wishing to reorganize their storerooms. These spaces, which on average house 95% of a museum's collections, are often saturated. Most of the time, they are closed to the public and generally inaccessible, and they also suffer from a lack of visibility.
Created in 2011 on the initiative of ICCROM, the RE-ORG program has been used successfully in many countries. Committees have even been set up in several geographical areas where RE-ORG has been applied by a significant number of museums: RE-ORG Chile, RE-ORG Nigeria, RE-ORG Canada, RE-ORG Belgium, RE-ORG South-East Europe, etc. In 2021, Catalonia and the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna will launch their RE-ORG programs, with training sessions for museum professionals. These theoretical and practical sessions enabled these regions to apply ICCROM's precepts on optimizing storage space and preventive conservation to their territory.
Corsica boasts a relatively large number of museums with a wide range of themes: fine art, archaeology, ethnology, history, contemporary art, etc. This diversity reflects the island's rich cultural heritage. The mission of these museums is to exhibit, enrich and conserve the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity. The conservation of their collections, whatever their nature, is at the heart of their concerns. This mission is carried out mainly in the reserves.
The Heritage Department of the Collectivité de Corse, aware of the challenges facing the reserves of its cultural institutions, contacted ICCROM to organize a training course in Corsica. After an initial visit by two ICCROM representatives in 2022, it was decided that the Museum of Corsica would be the ideal venue for a Re-Org training course.
PROJET RE-ORG CORSICA, Corsican museum reserves in ICCROM's sights (museudiacorsica.corsica)
The training course will take place from October 7 to 18, 2024, and will bring together 25 participants from cultural institutions in Corsica and on the mainland. Throughout the two-week course, the participants, divided into several groups, will reorganize the reserves of the Corsican Museum. The aim is to optimize space, promote object conservation, and open up the reserves to the general public.
This reorganization holds the promise of a multitude of opportunities. Beyond just saving space and improving conditions for conserving collections, the RE-ORG program could potentially revolutionize the way we think about and use reserves,making them accessible to as many people as possible.