Law and Cultural Heritage Day: When Museums go online

Dr. Yaniv Benhamou is co-organizing and speaking at the "Law and Cultural Heritage Day: When Museums go online", which is jointly organized with the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and will take place MEG 13:00-19:00 for the launch of the Policy Project.

Jointly organized by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE), this international conference will focus on the digitization of museum collections.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitization movement that has been carried out for several years within museums and which aims, among other things, to meet museums’ objectives of research, conservation, continuation and communication to society of the world’s natural and cultural heritage, present and future, tangible and intangible. The legal issues associated with this movement are complex, with a disparity of solutions available to museums and laws that are sometimes inadequate, inappropriate or insufficient. In the long term, the acceleration of technologies also raises the question of the future of the museum experience. The conference will explore these topics on the basis of a study project which, since 2016, has brought together a group of experts from Swiss and foreign universities under the supervision of Dr. Yaniv Benhamou, Prof. Marc-André Renold and Ms Justine Ferland. The project led to the launch of the website Digitization of Museums Collections (www.digitizationpolicies.com) in 2020 which aims to clarify the current legal and political framework while formulating policies to facilitate the activities of museums in the digital environment. Museum professionals are strongly encouraged to provide feedback about the recommendations issued (pertaining copyright, database rights, dispute resolution and a museum code of conduct) in order to encourage a continuous dialogue and to shape policies adapted to the needs of cultural heritage institutions.

This conference will provide a discussion forum for the global museum community, other partners in the field of cultural heritage and stakeholders concerned with the legal and societal issues related to digitization.