1In 2022 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Santiago de Chile’s Round Table declaration on a new form of museology. The great number of events and publications organized to mark the occasion testify to an interest in this meeting that became unmissable in museology (UNESCO, 2022; ICOFOM, 2022). Judging by these events, we would be led to believe that museologists always had an interest in Santiago’s ideals. To verify this constancy, we would like to take a closer look at the impregnation of Santiago’s recommendations, first historically, then through ICOM’s publication since 1972, with two different axes. The first sequence is devoted to counting the number of mentions of this event, which will give an idea of the impregnation of its values in ICOM publications. The second will focus on authors who have written about the Round Table, their provenance shedding light on the impact of this meeting on different regions of the world, notably among America, North America and Europe. Analyses from these different perspectives will reveal a slow but real penetration of this major encounter for the field that should be seen in the context of contemporary professional museum practices, which we will discuss in the conclusion.

Context

2Since 1980, actors linked to ecomuseums and community museums demanded of the International Council of Museums, ICOM, the recognition of these new museum models. In 1982, the association Muséologie Nouvelle et Expérimentation Sociale (MNES) was created in France, considered by André Desvallées (1992) to be one of the possible starting timeframes of the new museology, along with the Round Table of Santiago.

4Mario Moutinho (1995) states that the Declaration of Quebec advances museology especially in the recognition of the right to difference. But the workshop in Quebec did not provide original ideas and concepts in relation to Santiago, and its fundamental contribution was its confrontation with the new museum reality that had been realized in 1972. Subsequently, MINOM became affiliated to ICOM, not as one of its international committees but an independent organization. It has been said that it is only a renovating movement and not another museology (Duarte Cândido, 2003).

5One main difference between nouvelle muséologie and the social museology of MINOM is that the latter assumes a more radical break with the norms of museology and a deeper social and political engagement, including more association with the Round Table of Santiago, considered an early decolonial movement (Mellado, 2023). The Declaration of Santiago emphasizes the social uses of heritage and the political responsibility of museum professionals. Duarte Cândido (in press) identifies a certain depoliticization of the content between the Declarations of Santiago and Quebec, as well as other differences such as overcoming the interdisciplinary aspect through an intercultural approach. This intercultural approach considers other knowledge and epistemologies coming from non-academic contexts, especially those linked to Indigenous peoples of Latin America and to Afrodiasporic people, and the un-disciplined approach of a museology that does not wish to be framed in the existing university disciplines.

6For Chagas and Gouveia (2014) the need to adopt a new concept that would surpass the nouvelle muséologie was also because the existing expression lost power and was absorbed by normative museology. They characterize social museology as “committed to reducing injustices and social inequalities; combating prejudices; improving the quality of collective life; strengthening dignity and social cohesion; using the power of memory, heritage and the museum in favor of popular communities” (Chagas & Gouveia, 2014, p. 17). Its development context involves movements of redemocratization and resistance to neoliberalism, especially in Brazil and Portugal, but more broadly in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. After the period of estrangement between hegemonic museology and social museology, evident not only in ICOM but also in universities and museum institutions, an important recognition is the approval by ICOM of the proposal to create the International Committee of Social Museology in March 2023. 

7Taking into account the significant presence of the Round Table of Santiago in the discourse of contemporary Latin American museology and especially of social museology, we are interested in investigating its entry into the discourse of researchers and mainstream international museum workers through ICOM’s publications.

The Round Table of Santiago in ICOM’s publications

8The methodology we used to explore this integration is divided into two axes. The first axis concerns the choice of periodical, and the second focuses on specific search terms (see Table 1). To have a good overview of ICOM’s and UNESCO’s publications, we decided to analyze their main journals. Two scientific reviews were selected according to the following criteria:

• Having an international scope,

• Having a relationship with ICOM,

• Specifically mentioning international meetings in museology and analyzing their impacts in their publications.

9With these criteria, we analyzed:

• Museum International, which has been published since 1948 and defines itself as “a major forum for the exchange of scientific and technical information concerning museums and cultural heritage at an international level” (UNESCO, 2021). Since 2015, Museum International has been published by ICOM. 

• ICOFOM Study Series (ISS), which has been edited since 1983 by the International Committee for Museology of ICOM (ICOFOM). It focuses on the study of the theoretical bases of museology and its contemporary tendencies. The ICOFOM Study Series is, according to ICOFOM’s website, “the greatest bibliographical collection on museology so far” (ICOFOM, 2023).

10Both periodicals were analyzed in the same way to ensure uniformity concerning the investigation between the publications. We determined a specific lexical field linked to the Santiago Round Table that we then used to search in the three official ICOM languages – French, English and Spanish – in every issue to determine how often the Round Table of Santiago de Chile was mentioned.

Table 1. Lexical search terms

French	English	Spanish
Table ronde	Round Table	Mesa Redonda
1972	1972	1972
Santiago du Chili	Santiago de Chile	Santiago de Chile
Chili	Chile	Chile
Musée intégral	Integral museum	Museo integral

11Museum International is contemporary with Santiago’s Round Table, and the Round Table has been mentioned since the very beginning in 1972. In the 1970s, we can note two articles that mention the Round Table of Santiago (see Table 2). The first mention is actually an entire issue dedicated to the role of museums in Latin America. Mario Teruggi, from Argentina, relates briefly the process of the Round Table, underlining the outstanding nature of the event in bringing together professionals from different fields outside museums. There is then an increase in the 1980s, with five mentions, including an issue that celebrates the 10-year anniversary of the Round Table (1982, Museums, Heritage and Cultural Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean). The 1990s and 2000s total only four mentions, without mention of any anniversary. In the 2010s we find a rise in the number of mentions, for a total of 23 for that decade.  Although there is no issue entirely dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Round Table, 2012 is a real turning point, with six mentions in a publication devoted to Brazilian museology (Achievements and Challenges in the Brazilian Museum Landscape). This trend seems to be holding steady with five mentions between 2020 and 2022, including an issue dedicated to decolonization, including many articles that look back at the Round Table’s heritage.

12The ICOFOM Study Series (ISS) began to be published in 1983, thus there is no contemporary issue from the 1972 Round Table. From the decade 1980 to 1989, we have six articles that mention the Round Table. In fact, the first mention appears in 1983 in issue number one, in an article written by André Desvalées that focuses on the definition of ecomuseum. From 1990 to 1999, we can identify eight mentions, and the same number from 2000 to 2009. As with Museum International, we can see that there is an increase of interest in 2010-2019, with 19 mentions. In this decade, it is in 2013 that the number of mentions starts to increase significantly, with three mentions in the issue titled The Special Visitor: Each and Every One of Us. The largest number of mentions occurs in 2018, with five in the issue titled The Politics and Poetics of Museology. This trend is continued in 2020-2022, where we have multiple mentions per year. This increase can be explained by the publication of an issue dedicated to Santiago’s Round Table (with Latin American authors) on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 2022.

Table 2. Number of overall mentions of the Round Table of Santiago, by decade

Decades	Museum International	ICOFOM ISS	Total
1972 – 1979	2	0	2
1980 – 1989	5	6	11
1990 – 1999	3	8	11
2000 – 2009	1	8	9
2010 – 2019	23	19	51
2020 – 2022	5	21	34

13For the detailed list of articles represented by these numbers, see appendices 1 and 2.

14Overall, for both the ISS and Museum International, we have seen an exponential increase since the 2010s, indicating to us that only relatively recently have the precepts of the Round Table been integrated, understood, and applied.

Sharing knowledge around the Santiago Round Table

15This decade-by-decade account of the Santiago Round Table raises the challenge of sharing knowledge in an international context. The question as to why there is so much interest in the 2010s (evidenced in ISS and MI) remains unanswered. However, the translations – both literal and contextual – of the Round Table’s values are perhaps one hypothesis for such an increase. Pierre Bourdieu reminds us that in an intellectual import-export dynamic, several parameters need to be considered (Bourdieu, 2002); in particular, international political contexts are often left unmentioned, leading to partial situational awareness of the context in which the text was created, meaning that some writings can be misunderstood. The case of the Santiago Round Table is particularly interesting: available primary sources are few. One source, however, includes volume 15, number 3 of Museum International, published in 1973, which contains a report on the meeting with a few texts from some of the participants (not all of whom signed their text), as well as appendices such as the list of participants and recommendations. Then in 2000 Hugues de Varine, director of ICOM between 1965 and 1974 and an observer at the Santiago Round Table, published a text entitled “Autour de la Table Ronde de Santiago” (de Varine, 2000), in which he recalls his memories of the meeting. However, it is important to note that this text is giving only a partial view of the Round Table’s origins, as de Varine himself mentions that he did not speak Spanish at the time:

• 2 Translation by Elizabeth Weiser. Original text: « Cette décentration se faisait en espagnol, je pré (...)

This shift took place in Spanish. I specify the fact that we did not speak English or French in Santiago, and that’s why I cannot speak about the content of the discussions since I did not speak Spanish, I did not understand Spanish, and I was only the organizer. (Museo de La Educación Gabriela Mistral, 2021, Youtube)2

16Duarte Cândido, in her work Ondas do pensamento museológico brasileiro (2003), highlighted a rich Brazilian production aligned with the principles of the nouvelle muséologie that did not reach international visibility even among those interested in this aspect of museology (e.g. Desvallées, 1992; 1994). She attributes this problem to the language barrier: Brazilian authors writing almost exclusively in Portuguese and not being read outside of the lusophone world. We can consider that even though Spanish is more widespread and one of the official languages of ICOM since 2001, to a lesser extent this linguistic barrier also affects production in that language and may have been one of the factors impeding the immediate reach of the Declaration of Santiago.

17This linguistic barrier can be explored further through the same articles in the ICOFOM Study Series and Museum International issues. The distribution of authors by countries of origin may provide some clues as to the dynamics of the spread of Round Table values. Appendix 1, which lists the authors who have mentioned the Santiago Round Table in their articles in Museum International, indeed shows the presence of a language phenomenon. Although few participants wrote about the 1972 meeting, the preponderance of Latin American authors in the review from 1973 onwards demonstrates its direct and immediate impact on this part of the world. Before the 2000s, however, only a few European authors, notably French, wrote about the meeting, and it wasn’t until the late 2010s that interest in the values of the Santiago Round Table began to spread internationally.

18That first issue in 1973 is interesting because some participants signed the texts. However, one surprising note is that there is no text by Mario Vázquez from Mexico’s Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Anthropology Museum), even though we know that he presented the Casa del Museo project, introducing his concept of the museo integral. The first text by an author from outside Latin America (Frans Schouten from the Netherlands in 1987) takes the Round Table out of its specifically Latin American context to explain how these principles could be integrated more broadly into the professionalization of museum educators. This type of example shows that it is not just a question of mentioning the Santiago Round Table as a historical event, but that these principles could be applied within the profession.

19Appendix 2 shows all ICOFOM Study Series issues in which authors mention the Santiago de Chile Round Table, revealing a phenomenon almost identical to that observed in Museum International issues. There are a mix of authors, both from Latin American and the Caribbean and from other geographical and cultural areas of the world. Nevertheless, there is a predominance of authors from Latin America: 18 articles with authors from North America, Europe or Africa, and 31 from Latin America. This trend confirms what we have seen in issues of Museum International: a strong and important impregnation of the values of the Santiago Round Table in Latin America. The first author to evoke the Round Table is Andrès Desvallées (1983), who describes the event, the principle of the integral museum and also the Casa del Museo project. More than an analysis of the repercussions of the Round Table over a decade after it took place, it treats the Round Table as a historical event. In 1988, Peter Van Mensch next mentions the meetings of the ICOFOM symposia between 1986 and 1987, observing a divergence of approaches among museum practitioners through the prism of Round Table values:

Not wrongly the integrated [sic] museum concept and the traditional European collection-based museum concept are seen as opposites. During the discussion in course of the symposium “Museology and Museums” in Espoo (Helsinki) it was found that the apparent diversity in the museum field could be reduced to two fundamental types: the collection-based type [and] the community-based type. During the symposium in 1987 it was discussed whether these types both could be called museum. (p. 185)

20By 2022, in the introduction to the ISS issue dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Round Table written by Bruno Brulon Soares (2022), we observe that the tone has changed, revealing a broad acceptance of the values of the 1972 meeting:

This year of 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the renowned Round Table of Santiago de Chile and its Declaration, a document that has influenced museum theory, practice and policies to redefine inequalities and rethink hierarchies in the cultural sector worldwide. (p. 10)

21Although this analysis is still quite summary, it demonstrates that we are moving little by little from the mention of a historical event to the explanation of a phenomenon having important and effective repercussions on both practices and reflections.

Conclusion

22When we assess the impact of the Round Table of Santiago de Chile between 1972 and 2022, we observe that the principles of the new museology movement (in the sense of nouvelle muséologie) now enjoy widespread recognition within the international museum community. Following a 40-year period of worldwide discussions, the past decade has been partly devoted to a more systematic sharing of thoughts on the social perspective in museology. The study we have undertaken enlightens the fact that the values of the Santiago Round Table are at the center of discussions. However, this is rooted in a broader and more complex system. Therefore, we will suggest three possible ways to consider it further.

23The first consideration could be on the individual impact of specific authors on the dissemination of the values of the Santiago Round Table. Museum International and, especially, ICOFOM’s ISS are authored by influential figures in the field, including professor-researchers dedicated to training new generations of museologists (André Desvallées, François Mairesse, Mario Chagas, Bruno Brulon Soares, Fabien Van Geert, Manuelina Maria Duarte Cândido, Yves Bergeron, etc.). This filial act of knowledge sharing has a major impact and explains the reemergence of the values of the Santiago Round Table among younger generations of museologists. Hugues de Varine shares this observation in the last section of his text “Autour de la Table Ronde de Santiago,” in which he reflects on the repercussions of the meeting. As early as 2000 he was already mentioning its impact on university programs in museology and young up-and-coming museologists (de Varine, 2000).

24The second consideration might suggest studying the effective echo of the first publication on the subject in Museum International in 1973. How and who quotes that text, the first international trace of the meeting? We have just talked about the provenance of the authors and their impact given their great influence, but it would be an important next step to map out the references to find out which texts they are referring to. This colossal task would be essential to unravel the possible mythification of the Round Table, given the scarcity of direct sources. Has the Round Table of Santiago become a commonplace to which authors refer?

26Thus, in a future study, these axes could enable us to go further in our understanding of the reemergence of the value of the Round Table of Santiago, which remains one of the most significant museological events of the 20th century.