STATEMENT FOR HONOURABLE SHARIE B. de CASTRO
ON
INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM DAY

18 MAY 2022

It is with great pleasure that I greet you today, on International Museum Day 2022. The theme for this year’s International Museum Day is “The Power of Museums.” The Department of Culture has once again organized related activities for the entire week 16th to the 21^st of May.

As we progress towards improving efficiency and productivity within the public sector, I wish to emphasise that this extends to our responsibilities regarding culture and heritage.

We have quite a few museums in our Territory. Our museums tell the diverse, complex stories that are a part of our heritage. This is the “Power of Museums.” Much can be done to improve this sector in the Virgin Islands. A very important step in this process is to begin the task of exploring and increasing our professional qualifications in this sector.   

Therefore, I am pleased that the Department of Culture has taken this entire week to make presentations to the private and public secondary schools in our Territory, including our sister islands, on the many exciting careers within the museum sector. These presentations will explore what these careers do and the qualifications required to have these careers and jobs. Some of these careers that we can begin to explore include museum curator, collections manager, exhibition designer, museum educator, marketing manager, public programmer, exhibition installer and many more.

In addition, it is important that we begin to pay closer attention to a dying art – the art of storytelling. We must begin to explore the power of storytelling. The Department of Culture has worked with our museum curators and storytellers to develop a series of short videos, which will explore the stories behind the artefacts and museums. These short videos have engaging titles such as “Digging for Gold,” “Searching for Seashells,” “Faithful Legacy: Our Shipwrights and Mariners,” “The Peculiar Institution,” “Plantation Stories, Freedom Fighters and Cultural Beginnings,” “Conch Shell on Display” and “Theodolph Faulkner House and the Anegada Story.”

Please follow the Department of Culture on Facebook page @Virgin Islands Department of Culture, for more information.

I encourage you to watch, enjoy and learn.