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We have had a very interesting and exciting year. The highlight of the year was the ICOM General Conference “Museums and Cultural Landscapes” in Milan, Italy on July 3–9, 2016. The ICLM theme was “Shaping the cultural landscapes: the role of writers’ and composers’ museums”. At the ICOM General Conference plenary session on July 4th, I was hon-oured to pronounce an introductory speech before Orhan Pa-muk’s video interview. We had a fascinating cultural programme during the General Con-ference thanks to the tremendous efforts of our Board member Maria Gregorio and her assistants in Milan. At the ICLM gen-eral meeting we re-elected the Chair and some Board members, and elected some new Board members. I personally thank eve-ryone for coming and participating in our Conference sessions and general meeting.

This is our new Board:

Galina Alekseeva, ICLM Chair, the Leo Tolstoy Museum-Estate at Yasnaya Polyana, RussiaGabriella Gulyas, ICLM Secretary, the Petőfi Literary Museum, HungaryMaria Gregorio, Associated with the Italian literary and compos-ers’ museums, ItalyGalina Belonovich, the Tchaikovsky State Memorial Musical Mu-seum-Reserve, RussiaAlla Bayramova, the State Museum of Musical Culture of Azerbai-jan, AzerbaijanSàrolta Schredl, Department for Museums and Libraries, AustriaMaira Valtere, the Janis Akuraters’ Museum, Latvia

We had three Conference sessions with 23 speakers, and there were numerous participants with different questions and com-

mentaries. All the papers presented at the ICLM conference ses-sions were very professional and interesting.

As usual we had various cultural and museum events in different countries, we tried to cover some of them on our web site and in our Newsletters, including our discussion of our definition of what constitutes a literary museum. Many thanks to Maria Gre-gorio and her assistant Catherine for their work on the ICLM web-site.

At the ICLM general meeting in Milan we presented the Book of Proceedings of our ICLM Annual Conference-2015, dedicated to “Literature, Music, and Cultural Heritage”, which took place in Tbilisi (Georgia) on September 25–30th, 2015.

Our special thanks to our friend and colleague Adriano Rigoli, President of National Historic Homes Association, for bringing and arranging a beautiful exhibition about Historical and Liter-ary Memorial Houses in the Region Tuscany, and touring us and other guests. That was a great experience!

I am now looking forward to receiving all your papers for our Book of Proceedings of the Annual ICLM Conference in Milan. The deadline is February 28th, 2017. Many thanks to those authors who have already sent their articles.

I am happy to announce that we received the invitation from ICOM Greece to have our next annual Conference on Crete, Sep-tember 15–20th, 2017. The Conference theme is “Exhibitions. New Insights”. The ICLM application deadline for participation is June 1st, 2017. We will be informing you about the Conference as soon as we are getting new information from our Greek col-leagues.

Our next Board meeting will be in Budapest, at the Petőfi Literary Museum, on April 7–9, 2017. Anyone interested, especially our former Chairs and Board members, are invited to participate as non-voting guests.

With my best wishes for the Holidays and the New Year,Yours truly,

Galina Alekseeva, Ph. D.ICLM President

Dear colleagues, dear friends,Best wishes for 2017!

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“Museums and Cultural Landscapes” – the subject of this year’s ICOM General Conference – is in many ways a typically “Italian” theme. We only need to consider the unique natural and urban tissue of Italy,“so intimately related to the special nature of a cultural heritage which is broad, widespread, solid, stratified and an integral part of the environment”.The theme concerns all countries, however: for the landscape is inherent-ly a universal. Human beings relate to the landscape byinvesting it with their actions and meanings, thereby making it “their own”:“The landscape is the country where we live, which surrounds us with the images and symbols that identify and characterize it. We are responsible for the landscape both as individuals and as a community […]. It is a responsibility that demands active interventions for its protection, conservation and understanding within a participatory logic and a sustainable development perspective. The muse-ums […] havethesameresponsibility.”

Over the arch of three full years – from the moment the topic was an-nounced until the day the Conference took place – the organizers worked hard at fleshing out this vision. “The Charter of Siena” (now on line: http://bit.ly/2hNQ7Ha) emerged. All texts in italic in this text are quotes from it. So are key issues which underlie the Conference’s work. Among most significant one may list:“Involving the museums in the management and care of the cultural land-scape means to develop their natural vocation, by extending their responsibil-ity from their collections to the cultural heritage and surroundings: their local towns, villages and communities. Museums should promote the creation of “landscape communities” aware of their identity, involved in their preserva-tion, participating in their sustainable development. “Therefore, even though the European Landscape Convention proposed a common definition, it is also true that cultural landscapes vary from one country to another. Thus it is necessary to create a dialogue between many different thoughts about landscapes in the world.”In a nutshell, this is the meaning of the ICOM Conference, which brought to Milan from all over the world more than 3.000 professionals of museums.

Within this theoretical framework, which ought to guide closely the practice of individual museums, keynote speakers addressed the Confer-ence. In particular, I would like to recall the Turkish writer OrhanPamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature. His novel – The Museum of Innocence – spawned a museum in April 2012. Located in Istanbul, the institution won the Museum of the Year Award for 2014.It is not a coincidence that our Chair, Galina Alekseeva, gave the intro-duction to the speech, which is so close to the worldview of ICLM. One may listen to it in the online ICOM Newsletter:http://bit.ly/2hFFhCm

In its own work during the Conference, ICLM followed closely the gen-eral theme. “Shaping the Cultural Landscapes: The Role of Writers’ and Composers’ Museums” was its chosen topic. Over 70 museum profes-sionals attended, coming from Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, China, Den-mark, Finland, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, and the USA. These specialists presented 23 papers. The ensuing discussions on the role of museums in interpreting and defending the specificities of their landscape were often ardentand the conclusions pregnant.

The same guidelines inspired the many cultural events which framed our working days. We spent a day in Bergamo, following the steps of the com-poser Gaetano Donizetti, who had born there.As a “citizen,” he spent his whole life “curating” the magnificent urban and natural landscape, which echoes in his music. Parma –very near to the birthplace of Giuseppe Ver-di – was the goal of another whole-day excursion. We visited the Casa dellamusica, the Museum of opera and sound, but also the Museum of the well-known director Arturo Toscanini, himself born in Parma. Our final excursion took us to the Villa of the poet Antonio Fogazzaro. Located on the Italian shore of the Lugano Lake, it is a house museum where nature, culture, and writing interconnect in surprising echoes. The city of Milan, finally, opened for us the doors of two museums within a urban landscape of great historical interest, too. First, the re-cently wholly renovated House museum of Alessandro Manzoni, Italy’s foremost writer of the XIXth century. The many-dimensional Museum of the Scala Theater displayed for us many of its glorious mementos and musical trophies.

For all of us, the Conference was a long, pleasing stroll through the open-air museum of the Italian landscape, where the words of litera-ture, the sounds of music, the vibrations of nature, and the echoes of the stones of the cities mixed excitedly. These many facets left a lasting memory that will accompany us – this is our hope and wish – as we go about transforming the many suggestions into concrete projects aimed at caring for ones’ own cultural landscapes.

Maria GregorioICLM Board member

INVOLVING THE MUSEUMS IN CARING FOR CULTURAL LANDSCAPESICOM GENERAL CONFERENCEMILAN, 3–9 JULY 2016

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GLIMPSES OF ITALY

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INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM DAY 2017

Each year’s International Museum Day theme is pro-posed by ICOM’s network and aims to promote muse-um issues within society.

In 2017, the event will celebrate the theme: Museums and contested histories: Saying the unspeakable in museums.

The theme chosen for 2017 is “Museums and contested histories: Saying the unspeakable in museums”.

History is a vital tool for defining a given people’s iden-tity, and each of us defines ourselves through important and fundamental historic events. Contested histories are unfortunately not isolated traumatic events. These histo-ries, which are often little known or misunderstood, reso-nate universally, as they concern and affect us all.

Museum collections offer reflections of memories and representations of history. This day will there-fore provide an opportunity to show how museums display and depict traumatic memories to encourage visitors to think beyond their own individual experi-ences.

By focusing on the role of museums as hubs for promot-ing peaceful relationships between people, this theme highlights how the acceptance of a contested history is the first step in envisioning a shared future under the banner of reconciliation.

Would you like to know more? Check the International Museum Day website http://imd.icom.museum

www.imd.icom.museum www.facebook.com/internationalmuseumday @ICOMofficiel

Museums and contested histories: Saying the unspeakable in museums

INTERNATIONALMUSEUM DAY

MAY

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GREETINGS FROM CRETE

ICLM Board 2016-2019: President/Chairperson:Galina Alekseeva (Russia)Secretary Gabriella Gulyas (Hungary)Web-site: Maria Gregorio (Italy)Other Board members: Galina Belonovich (Russia), Alla Bayramova (Azerbaijan), Sàrolta Schredl (Austria), Maira Valtere (Latvia)

If you would like to receive the ICLM Newslet-ter as e-mail or fax, please send an e-mailto Galina Alekseeva: gala@tgk.tolstoy.rutel. +7 48751 76141, +7 910 944 5899,+7 4872 393196Editorial Address: galalexeeva@mail.ru,gala@tgk.tolstoy.ruDesign: Maria Belaya: mbelaya@yandex.ru(Yasnaya Polyana, Russia)Our thanks to Dr. Andrew Kotchoubey for editorial help.

ICLM PUBLICATIONS

Our new issue of the Book of Conference Proceedings was published last June: Literature, Music, and Cultural Heritage: Proceedings of the ICLM Annual Conference 2015 / Edited by the Board of ICLM. ICOM, Paris. Yasnaya Polyana Publishing House, 2016. 188, [1] p.: phot.