To be on alert following the recent devastating floods in the Valencia region is calling on museums and national crisis management. To be on alert following the recent devastating floods in the Valencia region is calling on museums and national crisis management committees, ICOM, and the International Council of Museums. It also suggests updating emergency plans for museums and cultural organisations to identify the works of art that need to be rescued first in a crisis.
The recent floods in Spain are the latest in a series of disasters that have hit more than twenty countries in recent weeks. ICOM, in collaboration with its national committees in Austria, the Czech Republic, Japan, Mali, Nepal, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Japan, Nepal, Poland, Romania and Spain, is trying to assess the damage in each country and identify new needs arising from the climate crisis.
As the council said in a statement, flooding poses a serious threat to museums, endangering both their infrastructure and the preservation of collections. High humidity and water are some major threats to artworks and museum collections. The Museum Council expresses its deep concern about the devastating floods that have recently affected communities worldwide, already affecting almost every continent in the world in the last year alone.
In the context of more frequent extreme weather events, ICOM draws attention to the preparedness of museums to respond to such events.
The situation in Valencia has not yet been fully assessed but in the Czech Republic, the extensive floods of 1997 and 2002 left their
mark on the country and its museum community. The flooding impacted
some thirty buildings belonging to galleries or museums and caused
damage amounting to some €50 million. It took Czech museums and galleries more than a year and a half to recover from the disaster.
Based on this experience, some institutions have developed research on this issue and have shared the experience with other crisis-facing institutions.
In 2021, ICOM's International Commission on Conservation (ICOM CC) published the Guidelines for the Rehabilitation of Cultural Heritage for Objects Damaged by Water. These guidelines are based on experiences from floods in Central Europe, China, and India and are aimed at museum professionals around the world.
For its part, the ICOM National Committee in Austria has set up a working group involving regional museum associations, the Federal Ministry, the Austrian Emergency Platform for Museums and Archives, the Austrian Commission for UNESCO, the Federal Office for Monuments and Sites, the Austrian Armed Forces and Blue Shield Austria, with the aim of producing a publication on emergency planning for museums and cultural institutions, bringing together all relevant information from international organisations already available in a useful, comprehensive handbook.
Also, the Austrian National Committee, in cooperation with Blue Shield Austria, developed the “ICOM Austria Emergency Tag for Priority Evacuation in Museum Storage” to clearly and consistently mark the objects that need to be rescued first from storage during a crisis. As the International Council states, this is a critical issue that arises during any kind of emergency.
--Photo Credit: Matěj Baťha
In the Czech Republic, the extensive floods of 1997 and 2002 left their
mark on the country and its museum community.
