Reliability, credibility, and truth in the Icelandic museum world!
The annual professional conference for museum staff The School Bus was held for the 37th time at Hotel Selfoss from October 1-3, 2025. The Association of Icelandic Museums and Museum Professionals (FÍSOS) organizes the conference, and the Farskóli directors deserve our best thanks for an informative and fun Farskóli. The conference is an important platform for professional development, education, and networking for museum professionals from all over the country, and attendance was good this year, with 160 people attending. The theme of this year's Farskóli was „Reliability, credibility, and truth in collections“and the program was packed and diverse, consisting of, among other things, lectures, seminars, a scavenger hunt, and a field trip around the Southern Region.
The school session was convened early on Wednesday and began with the address ‘Can practicing art heal societal disorders by reconnecting our minds with our bodies?‘ which was delivered by Thomasine Giesecke, an artist and education curator at the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre museums in Paris. She discussed the success and importance of art therapy, which can have a healing effect on various groups in society. There were also presentations from the head of Sarps, who held the title of New Sarpur: The Current Situation, where Vala Gunnarsdóttir reviewed the status of the new Sarpur. But now the end of that work is in sight, and a new Sarpur will hopefully see the light of day in the coming months, and will undoubtedly greatly improve the registration of museum objects. The Sarpur operating company has been in development cooperation with the software company Zetcom Marcell Zemp, founder and CEO of Zetcom, spoke about the new Sarp and the company, which specializes in developing software solutions and services for the collections, assets, and archives of companies and institutions.
The FÍSOS annual general meeting was held over a light lunch, and at the end of the meeting, it was a pleasure to applaud the new Honorary members of FÍSOS to Elín S. Sigurðardóttir, Frost F. Jóhannesson, Guðmundur Ólafsson, and Inga Jónsdóttir. More about that here.
Þóra Björk Ólafsdóttir, Executive Director of the Museum Council, gave the talk: Where does your collection stand? Figures from the collection work 2016-2023. There, Thóra discussed, among other things, the information that the Museum Council collects about museum work, what is good to keep in mind when analyzing statistics, and what to avoid. For example, statistics can be misleading if they lack context, if biased samples appear, and more interesting points.
After the presentations, the distance learning students went on a field trip led by Hannes Stefánsson, where they visited Árnesingar Art Museum, Árnesingar Regional Museum and finally the Military Museum at Selfoss Airport on this excellent tour of the South Coast. The day ended with a regular pub quiz.
Bergur Ebbi opened the day for us on Thursday with a talk about museums, identity, and conscience, before a variety of seminars organized by museum professionals began. Fifteen seminars were held, which covered topics such as preservation, exhibitions, the future of turf houses, tourism, museum education, art therapy, audio description for the blind and visually impaired, and nature. You can read more about the seminars. here.
The Council of Museums, in collaboration with the Program in Museum Studies and FÍSOS, hosted a seminar on Museum Work in Tourism – How can the position of museums in tourism be strengthened? The seminar had great attendance, and it was clear that museum professionals are passionate about the topic. The seminar was set up as a kind of brainstorming session where the organizers facilitated the discussion with group work in the form of speed dating and then more in-depth discussions on how museums can enter the tourism industry more safely.
The day was then broken up with a scavenger hunt around Selfoss, and the society's very fun annual party was held at Hotel Selfoss, where guests had a great time.
On the last day, there was a discussion about the new Selfoss downtown, which was a reference to the Farskólans theme. There, architect Sigurður Einarsson of the new downtown gave a presentation about it, and following that, Vilhelmína Jónadóttir, an ethnologist and specialist at the Ministry of Culture, gave a presentation; On the appeal and historicism in the new Selfoss town center, and finally, they took questions from the Farskóli guests.
The workshop is held by the Association of Icelandic Museums and Museum Professionals with support from the Museum Council and participation fees. The mobile school was run by a steering committee that included Lýður Pálsson, director of the Árnessingur Museum, who served as the course director; Sigurlaugur Ingólfsson of the City History Museum; Helga Aradóttir of the National Museum of Natural History; and Kristín Scheving of the Árnessingur Art Museum. Also working with the mobile school board was Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir, a staff member of FÍSOS.
The school year at Tryggvaskóli was concluded by a graduate of Selfoss.
