His willingness and ability to turn a critical eye towards museums questioning their role in society and how they operate recently earned Canmore’s Robert Janes, an internationally recognized museum expert, the Alberta Museums Association’s top award.
The Alberta Museums Association awarded Janes, who served as the president and chief executive officer of the Glenbow Museum from 1989 to 2000, the Lieutenant Governor’s Award at the Westin Hotel in Calgary, Sept. 27 for the work he has undertaken over the past 35 years. He has been urging museums, which he describes as social institutions, to be creative and take a stand on issues.
“What is their role in society as institutions? They have vast potential to contribute to community well-being,” he said, adding museums offer a creative environment and generally have the trust and respect of the public.
“I think that trust and respect they have is a huge advantage in museums fulfilling their potential as a social organization,” he said.
But museums are only in a good position to promote ideas and issues that can benefit communities as long as directors and board members are willing to step outside the box and push aside traditional practices.
“Museums are social institutions that need to push that and need to challenge the status quo and take the risk. That attitude has made me an internal critic, although some see me as an infernal critic,” he said, laughing.
Janes received his doctorate in archaeology at the University of Calgary in 1970 and he has since done most of his work outside of Alberta, including serving as the founding director of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, N.W.T.
He is the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship and the author of Museums in a Troubled World: Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse?, Looking Reality in the Eye: Museums and Social Responsibility and Museums of the Paradox of Change.
Janes is also working as a volunteer with the University of Victoria as an advisor to the cultural resource program and as a member of the feasibility committee working to establish a city museum in Edmonton.
According to the Alberta Museum Association, the Lieutenant Governor’s Award, “Recognizes the extraordinary contributions of an individual to Alberta’s museum community and their achievements in culture and heritage at the provincial, national and/or international level.”
