Mechtild Rössler is the Director of Heritage Division & Director of the World Heritage Centre at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
1. Why is MuseumWeek important for UNESCO?
Museums do more than display precious objects. In our globalized and digitized world, they serve as important social learning and knowledge sharing spaces, among different populations and publics. MuseumWeek 2016 succeeded in gathering 3500 cultural institutions from 75 different countries and we already know that they are more than 4200 in 2017, demonstrating their will to expose and share culture the general audiences on modern medias.
We constantly strive to come up with creative ideas to promote museums amongst our Member States, partners and public. Our collaboration with MuseumWeek is one such endeavour to expand the celebration of culture, bring communities together, and share contents, stories, facts and experiences in many languages.
Moreover, this year the event focuses on women and culture as its central theme. What could be better than the UN striving to promote gender equality?