Saturday, May 18 is International Museum Day

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) established International Museum Day (IMD) in 1977 to encourage public awareness of the role of museums in the development of society.

Every year, International Museum Day has a theme in order to promote museum issues within society. This year, the museum community decided to celebrate IMD 2013 around the theme: Museums (Memory + Creativity) = Social Change

Alfred Eisenstaedt, A Dutch grandmother and child at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam looking at the “Nightwatch,“ 1932 (326.1989)

I love museums: the beauty, and sometimes the horror, that they are preserving from the ravages of time.

Ruth Orkin, Woody at the Met, 1963 (545.1983)

These buildings are huge deposits of memories, culture, and history; they are priceless treasure chests of our artistic masterpieces.

Chim (David Seymour), [Couple in Etruscan museum, Rome?], ca 1951 (BS0956)

When I lived in Italy, I worked in some of them. My favorite time was when they were closed, there weren’t any visitors, and the lights were suffused.

Chim (David Seymour), [Visitors observing a statue at the National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy], 1952 (BS0259)

Museums are safes, they are coffers as the archives are vaults for documents. As the motherboards in our computers are the main memory, museums are the depositories of our past actions and our ideas.

Tod Papageorge, Metropolitan Museum of Art Opening, 1977 (882.2000)

When I’m in a museum, it seems to me to be in a garden. Like in a botanical garden, I have all my loved “flowers” around me and I walk along them.