The Centre for the Presentation of Cultural Heritage, one of the methodical departments for the area of museology, was founded on the 1st November 2005. The Centre originated as an initiative of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic to fulfil one of the goals of the Effective Movable Heritage Care conception of the Czech Republic for the years 2003 – 2008.
The Centre is an independent department of the National Museum with its seat in the National Museum New Building - the former seat of the Federal Assembly - engaged in documentation, methodical, educational and consulting services.The main subject of interest of the Centre for Presentation of Cultural Heritage is the area of presenting collections and professional knowledge to the public. Specifically, the main issues of the Centre are questions of museum presentation and public communication, remarkable presentation enterprises, museum education, digitalization and the possibilities of using the digitalized heritage (i.e. engagement in the European digital library Europeana), utilizing new techniques and technologies in the area of museum presentation, and presentation of museums as institutions and their relation to the public.
The Centre seeks to define the role of museums and ways of communication between museums and the public in the emerging global information society. One of the goals of the Centre is to create an easy way for museums to accept and handle their digital environments, since it is obvious that on-line presentation is going to be the basis of the relationship between the museum and the public, both from the perspective of attracting visitors to the museum and presenting its contents via virtual exhibitions.
The other activities of the Centre include:
- Building a specialized library in the fields of museology, digitalisation of collections and cultural heritage, presently containing more then 1000 titles mostly in English
- Providing specialized library services to the public
- Extraordinary presentation enterprises in the museums area – e.g. Prague Museum Night
- Publishing the peer-reviewed journal Museum: Museum and Regional Studies (Muzeum: Muzejní a vlastivědná práce)
- Operating and administrating a specialised information portal www.emuzeum.cz
- Engagement in the Athena project
Our future work will include:
- Additional programmes
- Education inside and outside of the museum
- Museum accessibility for disabled people
- Promotion of interactive exhibitions on various levels
- Emphasis on visitor comfort and building up the idea of a visitor-friendly museum
- Exploring the possibility of the utilization of digitalized museum collections, creation of virtual exhibitions, virtual sight-seeing of museums, permanent and temporary exhibitions, and virtual research environments
