Structure for a Museology Course in Brazil

Abstract

This article presents the primary theoretical and conceptual framework in which the elaboration of the pedagogical project for the 2010 Museology undergraduate program at the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Brazil is based. It discusses the amplified concept of a museum, the place of Museology as a discipline of Applied Social Sciences and the specific research content within Museology. A moment of great expansion of the higher education in Brazil provided context for the creation of this programme, through a Federal Government project entitled Program to Support Restructuring and Expansion Plans of Federal Universities (REUNI) and also by the UFG’s initiative through its Faculty of Social Science and Anthropological Museum, which has become the main laboratory for the new Museology course. We present the structural concepts of this course as museum, Museology as a Applied Social Science field and other discussions which were important to choose the disciplines offered in the program, if we consider the existence of a General Museology, a Special Museology and an Applied Museology, and also the existence of a museological chain of operation based on cultural heritage safeguard and communication, in opposition to the hegemonial program structure considering preservation, research and communication. In our view, the chain of operation implies the existence of museological applied research integrating it parts (which are documentation, conservation, expography and cultural educational action), and avoid to explicitly mention research because it can be misunderstood with systematic investigation and study of collections, which are also done inside the museum, but belongs to others fields’ knowledge, external to Museology. We also try to demonstrate how the UFG’s structure of Museology Course has privileged to prepare students for applied research in Museology, avoiding overlapping contents from other knowledge fields which also make researches and interpretations of museum collections.