Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 21 Issue 12

museum is the only valid institution when, in reality, we know that it has difficulty keeping pace with society and adapting to new needs beyond the simple management of collections. Museums must be at the service of society and be open to the changes that society is experiencing. Moreover, some believe that museums are the only possible institution, albeit with different typologies. In contrast while others feel that it is temporary and transitory, evolving and changing, and not the only way to relate to heritage. In other words, a museum is no longer the master of public management, and other alternatives have appeared which, although they use museum techniques for their realization, are not strictly speaking museums. Nevertheless, museology can become an "instrument for building the future if it directs its interest to the relationship between man and his heritage, be it a museum or non-museum, cultural or not, material or intangible" ( Ibid . 183). Eulàlia Morral (1989: 185), in her reflections on the future of museology, questions whether we will ever be able to foresee the future if we have not yet managed to draw up scientific statements or objective laws that would provide a basis for the development of human relationships with heritage throughout history and the different cultural movements. The same author points out that heritage is the bearer of memory to recognize a collective identity. Thus, we go from heritage to memory and from memory to identity. However, on the one hand, it is doubtful that heritage is equivalent to memory because its preservation is the result of a contingency or a subjective choice. On the other hand, although in 1986, it was claimed that identity is established by process of differentiation, it can often drift into the aesthetic and folkloric fields. But today, the difference is not fashionable, and, through the media, we are inculcated with unique, delocalized models. Memory thus becomes boring and anachronistic. That is why she wonders whether heritage is still of any use, given that we live in a society in which we have two ways of experiencing heritage, one tangible and the other intangible. We know that today real heritage has no validity if it does not become an image since it is the image that gives the original its raison d'être . It seems that societies without memory move forward more freely and that the future belongs to the a-cultural generations. IV. S tránský and his C ommitment to the T eaching of M useology at U niversities From his early days as a professor, Stránský saw the need for museology to be recognized as an autonomous, scientific discipline that could be taught within universities with all the guarantees of any other discipline. However, he witnessed how his efforts to introduce museology studies in universities were considered by museum professionals as a product of a certain 'intellectual immaturity' (Stránský, 1993: 127). Even though, as early as 1923, Jaraslav Helfert, Director of the Moravian Museum, had already created the post of lecturer in museology at the University of Masaryk, where he remained until 1948. In 1963, however, Jan Jelinek established a Department of Museology at the University of Masaryk, although Stránský took over all the management and supervisory work. It should not be forgotten that Jelinek was also the founder of the ICTOP Committee in 1968 and ICOFOM in 1976. In 1990, after the fall of the communist regime, the University in Brno, which since 1960 had been named after the Czech botanist Jan Evangelista Purkynê, regained its original name, becoming Masaryk University, and the Department of Museology was restored within the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy. Of particular importance were the organization and development, in cooperation with UNESCO, of the International Summer School of Museology (ISSOM) courses for students, taught and directed by Stránský from 1986 to 1996. Certainly, Spanish museologists were aware of these; they had heard about the courses given in the summer and were interested in how they worked. As early as 1994, the International Summer Courses in Museology (ISSOM), directed by Stránský, were announced in an Andalusian journal (S/A 1994: 20). It should be noted that this journal, since its beginnings in 1992, has systematically reported on all the courses and conferences on museology and heritage held in Spain and abroad, thus promoting the dissemination and knowledge of these courses and encouraging participation in them. The participation in these courses of more than twenty Spanish museum professionals has influenced, together with their doctoral theses and publications, the development of museological discourse in Spain. In 1994, both Masaryk University and the International Summer School in Brno were very interested in establishing a chair in museology, so they applied for permission from UNESCO, who granted it through the UNITWIN program, giving it the title of Chair of Museology and World Heritage, to be directed by Vinos Sofka (2002: 41). Between 1997 and 2002, Stránský held the Chair of Ecomuseology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Mateja Bela, Branská Bystrica (Slovakia). It can be said that it was the museologists from Eastern European countries who have been the most committed to the establishment of museology as an autonomous discipline so that it could be taught in their universities without any problem, given the political regime in the countries that signed the Warsaw Pact. The figure of Jan Jelínek, Director of the Anthropos Museum in Brno and President of the Consultative Committee of ICOM, as well as its president between 1971 and 1977, is worth highlighting because he © 2021 Global Journals Volume XXI Issue XII Version I 29 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2021 A Zbyněk Zbyslav Stránský’s Museological Impact on Spain