International Museum Day was celebrated on May 18 throughout the Azores, renewing reflection on the role museums continue to play in preserving memory, strengthening cultural identity, and connecting communities across an increasingly fragmented world.

Commemorated annually since 1977 under the initiative of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), this year’s celebration unfolded under the theme “Museums Uniting a Divided World,” emphasizing museums as spaces capable of building bridges between cultures, generations, and communities.

In the Azores, the commemorations also became an occasion to reflect upon the archipelago’s own museum network — institutions that preserve not only artifacts and archives, but the lived memory of island life itself.

The Direção Regional dos Assuntos Culturais currently oversees a regional network composed of eight museums and an ecomuseum on Corvo Island, created through a partnership between the Regional Government and the municipality of Vila do Corvo in order to safeguard Corvo’s unique heritage.

The network includes institutions such as the Museu Carlos Machado, the Museu da Horta, the Museu de Angra do Heroísmo, the Museu do Pico, the Museu das Flores, and the Museu Francisco de Lacerda, among others. Together, these institutions mirror the geography of the archipelago itself, preserving distinct yet interconnected dimensions of Azorean identity.

Visitor numbers over the last decade revealed the growing importance of museums within the Region’s cultural and tourism landscape.

According to data cited from the regional statistical portal Portada, Azorean museums and museum centers received 148,074 visitors in 2012. By 2024, that number had risen to 345,031 visitors across the archipelago’s 18 museums and museum nuclei.

Figures provided by the Regional Directorate for Culture showed that in 2025 alone, museums under regional administration welcomed 256,586 visitors. The Museu do Pico registered the highest number with 86,183 visitors, followed by the Museu Carlos Machado with 54,155 and the Museu de Angra do Heroísmo with 35,760.

The data also confirmed another increasingly visible reality: the majority of museum visitors in the Azores now come from abroad or mainland Portugal.

In 2024, museums recorded 162,457 foreign visitors alongside more than 32,000 school group participants — a reflection of both growing tourism and educational outreach efforts.

According to Albertina Oliveira, Councilwoman for Education and Culture in the municipality of Lagoa, the Azores have experienced a growing overlap between nature tourism and cultural tourism.

“Most tourists come seeking the islands’ idyllic natural landscapes,” she observed, noting that this often results in less spontaneous visitation to museums and cultural spaces. Still, Oliveira emphasized that museum audiences have become increasingly diverse, with growing participation from both European and North American visitors, alongside a gradual increase in local attendance encouraged through educational initiatives and community programming.

A similar perspective was offered by anthropologist Susana Tiago of the Museu do Tabaco da Maia, who argued that museums still struggle against perceptions that they are distant or elitist spaces disconnected from everyday life.

“This perception can contribute to a certain distancing of local audiences,” she explained, “who do not always recognize the museum as an accessible, relevant, and close space.”

Tiago also acknowledged that the museum sector in the Azores faces structural challenges intensified by insularity itself: limited resources, geographic distance from major cultural centers, staffing shortages, unstable funding, and difficulties maintaining long-term planning.

At the Museu do Tabaco da Maia, visitor numbers during the first four months of 2026 fell approximately 30 percent compared to the same period the previous year, although visitors from mainland Portugal continued to represent the museum’s principal audience.

Among the challenges increasingly confronting museums worldwide, Tiago also identified the rise of artificial intelligence as one of the defining issues of contemporary museology.

While AI can support cataloguing, accessibility, and interactive experiences, she warned that it also raises ethical and cultural concerns regarding authenticity, algorithmic bias, copyright, and the replacement of human mediation by automated systems.

“The great challenge,” she said, “is integrating artificial intelligence critically and responsibly, ensuring that technological innovation does not compromise the educational, cultural, and human mission of these institutions.”

For both Albertina Oliveira and Susana Tiago, the future sustainability of Azorean museums will depend upon stronger public investment, stable institutional support, specialized professionals, and deeper engagement with local communities.

Ultimately, International Museum Day in the Azores became more than a symbolic commemoration.

It served as a reminder that in an archipelago shaped by migration, volcanic geography, memory, and fragile continuity, museums are not merely repositories of objects.

They are guardians of collective experience.

Places where the islands attempt to preserve not only what they were, but what they still hope to remain.

Translated and adapted from a story in Diário dos Açores