Environment: A Central Issue in the Museological Program

Abstract

The Museums Summit of America, “Museums and Sustainable Communities”, held Costa Rica, back in 1998, participants assumed the commitment of making of becoming these institutions in tools for building the sustainability of their communities. Thirteen years later, the Program of Heritage, Development and Society, from the School of Sociology, carried out a research trying to find out, what have done three Costa Rican’s museums (National Museum, Museum of Costarrican Art and Museums of the Central Bank) to fulfill this commitment. Incorporating in their day a day work, four axes: environment, gender, accessibility and marginal groups.  In this paper we explore, how these museums have incorporated the environmental axis in their work, trying to determine what actions have been developed in this area, and to what extent. The results are that no matter, all three museums have being carrying out different activities into this axis, like: exhibitions, better environmental practices, etc., none of them, are in response to a institutional policies, which allow a systematical work, in this axis, for what it is needed, that museums develop not only actions or activities in this area, but policies which allow a more systematic work into this axis.