International Museum Day 2018 and ‘hyperconnected’ lesson for Nigeria

As much as museums are basically about preservation of the past for the good of today and the future, the dynamics of a world on a fast lane would not allow its management to continue to remain antiquated. Perhaps, the need to keep pace with the changing world of communication informed the International Council of Museums’ (ICOM) celebration of ‘International Museum Day 2018’, which was observed world wide last Friday, May 18, 2018.
  
With the theme ‘Hyperconnected Museums: New Approaches, New Publics,’ this year’s focus, according to ICOM, was inspired by “Hyperconnectivity,’ a term that surfaced “in 2001 to design the multiple means of communication” in the 21st century. Highlighted then were media such as “face-to-face contact, email, instant messaging, telephone or the Internet.” For a country such as Nigeria where museum-going culture has declined in the last two to three decades, perhaps the 2018 theme of International Museum Day comes as a wake up call to reviewing the relevant government agency’s approach towards better relationship with the public.
  
Managed by National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), Nigeria’s 50 state-owned museum facilities have nearly the same number of functioning galleries spread across the country’s six geo-political zones. Funding for the museums come solely from the Federal Government, a recurring spending that is part of the country’s huge non-revenue yearly civil service burden on the nation’s increasing infrastructure deficit.

The report added that the museums achieved the highest revenues in December, recording EGP6.8 million with 117,000 visitors, while the lowest revenue reached was $1.7m in June with 21,800 visitors.
 
Nigeria’s apex, National Museum, Onikan, Lagos, would come as a measure to evaluate others in the country. The museum at Onikan, according to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), recorded 17,656 visitors in the first quarter of 2018. Two weeks ago, the agency quoted Education Department Head, Emmanuel Omotosho, saying patronage was 403 visitors higher than the 17,253 recorded in the first quarter of 2017.
 
What categories of visitors did the museum record? 15,142 students, 2,310 Nigerian adults and 204 foreigners visited the Lagos museum during the period under review. However, records of visits in the last three years suggest both an increase and a decline. Omotosho recalled how the museum had 42,724 in 2015, 46,359 for 2016, and 41,826 in 2017.
  
ICOM, in its 2018 message, noted how new communication methods could improve visits: “Thanks to technology, museums can now reach way beyond their core audience and find new publics when approaching their collections in a different way: it can be the digitalisation of their collections, adding multimedia elements to the exhibition or something as simple as a #hashtag that allows visitors to share their experience in social media.”
 
As regards improving the state of the museum at Onikan to attract more visitors, governments – past and current – appear not to have done enough. While a Federal Government of Nigeria and Ford Foundation project aimed at remodeling the museum with $2 million was suspended by the foreign donor due to the inability of government to provide N500 million counterpart funding in 2010, nothing seems to have changed with the new regime.