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Conference

EXPLORE, SHARE AND ADVANCE THE IDEAS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF MUSEUMS

Just some of the organisations taking part in Museum Ideas this year

With a progressive attitude and international approach, the Museum Ideas conference in London has welcomed thousands of museum professionals from over 30 countries to explore the ideas shaping the future of museums.

Museum Ideas 2019 – Explore the ideas shaping the future of museums
Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 September, London

Book Your Ticket Today
This year we have seen the fastest uptake of tickets since the annual conference launched 8 years ago. Museum Ideas 2019 is now sold out

“A conference for mind expanding conversations and international networking”
– Martin Payne, The British Museum

Museum Ideas 2019 – the eighth edition of the annual international conference – will challenge the status quo, promote representation and collaborative cultural democracy, explore new models of socially engaged participatory practice and much more – sharing pioneering ideas that will help shape and support change in museums around the world. The conference will welcome delegates from 26 countries – from Brazil to Romania, Denmark to Australia, Canada to India.

Each year the conference brings together a deliberately eclectic group of speakers and challenges them to share transformative ideas in concise, powerful talks. The aim is for delegates to be inspired by perspectives outside their own specialism and locality. We want delegates to be challenged by speakers who can spark change in unexpected ways. What unites the conference is the passion, commitment and enthusiasm of contributors along with their desire to share valuable expertise and experience.

Museum Ideas 2019 speakers

2019 Speakers
Speakers this year include: Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, Smithsonian American Art Museum, United States; Joyoti Roy, CSMVS Museum, Mumbai, India; Nina Finigan, Auckland Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira, New Zealand; Ryan Jefferies, Science Gallery Melbourne, Australia; Masum Momaya, Open Society Foundations (former Smithsonian Institution and International Museum of Women); Abira Hussein, All Change; Aisling Serrant, Museum of London Docklands; Dan Hicks, University of Oxford; Martin Brandt Djupdræt, Den Gamle By, Denmark; Anna Hansen, Regional Museum, Kristianstad, Sweden; Emily Siddons, Museums Victoria, Australia; Lin Stafne-Pfisterer, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway; Kati Price, Victoria & Albert Museum; Dafydd James, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales; Liam Wiseman, Bristol Old Vic; Kate Forde, Wellcome Collection; Clare Barlow, Wellcome Collection; Nicola Bird, Oxford University Museums; Dan Vo, LGBTQ Tours, V&A; Eilish Clohessy, Derby Museum and Art Gallery; Dani Parr, Almeida Theatre.

Conference Talks Include
Break the Wheel: Museums Challenge the Status Quo, Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, Head of Public Programs, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. As museum practitioners we can allow museums to be a tool of the establishment, the powered, even the oppressor. But through a reflective practice and a reimagining of our purpose, we can instead exercise the power of the museum towards challenging the status quo.

In Search of Power and Resistance in the Archive, Nina Finigan, Curator, Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, New Zealand. Power is at the centre of archival work: the power to retain, discard, and shape what is remembered and how. This presentation explores the various historic and contemporary ways archives and museums create, perpetuate and reinforce forms of hegemonic power.

The Future of Co-Curation in Museums, Joyoti Roy, Head of Strategy, CSMVS Museum, Mumbai, India. Museums are public institutions and a real and vital contact with the public can and should have many layers and reasons. This talk examines some key models of co-curation in both the UK and India and explores what they can learn from each other.

Multaka-Oxford: Meeting Point and Agency for Change, Nicola Bird, Community Engagement Officer, Oxford University Museums. This presentation highlights the unique role of museum collections in supporting people who are forced migrants settling in the UK. Multaka questions and challenges power dynamics in dominant discourse and approaches in museum practice.

Curating Justice by Courting Controversy, Masum Momaya, curator, writer and researcher. Although not always courted, controversy in museums can open up meaningful dialogue about difficult issues. Since museums are some of the very few non-commercial spaces where the public visit and engage, should museums actually do more to court controversy?

Museums, Networks & Active Memories, Emily Siddons, Producer, Exhibitions, Experience and Engagement, Museums Victoria, Australia. New and emerging approaches to the production and dissemination of cultural content are testing the definitional limits of what constitutes a museum. As platforms shift and morph with rapid fluidity, new models of museums are emerging that attempt to bridge the digital and physical divide and engage with all spaces in between.

What Museums Can Learn From the Theatre, Liam Wiseman, Relationship Manager, Museums, Arts Council England. Creating a miniature museum inside a working theatre is no easy feat, but that’s exactly what happened at Bristol Old Vic. Liam will share with you what he learned whilst working in a theatre environment, as well as what museums could be doing to become more theatrical.

Queer Eye in the Museum, Dan Vo, Project Coordinator, LGBTQ Tours, V&A. The award-winning LGBTQ tours at the V&A present non-binary and non-heteronormative narratives that explore a spectrum of gender and sexual identities through a selection of LGBTQ related objects. Dan led the research and will discuss how queer lives, culture and theory can be powerfully communicated through these tours.

“Museum Ideas is the place to be inspired, renewed and enthused by great ideas!”
– Theresa Nicolson, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Conference Venue
The Museum of London documents the history of London from prehistoric to modern times. The museum is located on London Wall and is a few minutes’ walk north of St Paul’s Cathedral, overlooking the remains of the Roman city wall and on the edge of the oldest part of London, now its main financial district. It is primarily concerned with the social history of London and its inhabitants throughout time. The museum is the largest urban history collection in the world, with more than six million objects. It welcomes more than one million visitors each year.

Event Dates
Wednesday 11—Thursday 12 September. The main conference day is Thursday and is designed so it can be attended as a standalone event. There is an additional day of pre-confernce talks on Wednesday but space is more limited.

Conference Chair
Tony Butler will be chairing Museum Ideas 2019. Tony has been Executive Director of Derby Museums since 2014. Derby Museums includes Derby Silk Mill, the site of the world’s first factory and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is currently in the midst of a £16.5 million redevelopment. Previously, Tony was director of the Museum of East Anglian Life for nine years where he repositioned the organisation as a social enterprise and led a major capital development programme. In 2011 he founded the Happy Museum Project, to create an international community of practice to explore how museums could contribute to a society in which well-being and environmental sustainability were its central values.

Widening Participation
This year over a quarter of tickets are either fully funded or were booked at the subsidised rate of £77. This rate was available for students, emerging professionals, freelancers, those working at smaller organisations or independent museums, and for professionals often underrepresented at museum conferences.

Environmental Responsibility
We recognise that all events, exhibitions and conferences have an environmental impact. In an attempt to help reduce our impact on the planet, this year we are making the default lunch options vegetarian and vegan, event banners and signage are made from recycled cardboard, delegate badges are printed on wildflower seeded paper which attendees can take home and grow, and conference bags are made in a more environmentally responsible way. We will also be making donations to Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and a charity which plants trees and protects woodlands.

Register now for Museum Ideas 2019 – with fresh insights you can take directly back to your team, the events will add tremendous value to your current work and are an active investment in the future and what you choose to do next. .

Museum Ideas 2019 takes place 11-12 September in London.

“An inspirational conference! A coming together of museum minds from across the world – gaining insights, sharing ideas and making connections”
– Gillian Crumpton, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

Speakers at previous editions of Museum Ideas include: Bonita Bennett, District Six Museum, Cape Town, South Africa; Manal Ataya, Sharjah Museums, United Arab Emirates; Whitney Donhauser, Museum of the City of New York; Elizabeth Cotton, Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, New Zealand; Chris Michaels, The National Gallery, London, UK; Katrina Lashley, Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum, Washington, D.C., United States; Sree Sreenivasan, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; Kaywin Feldman, Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Jonas Heide Smith, National Gallery of Denmark; Mark Miller, Tate; Robert Stein, Dallas Museum of Art; Silvia Filippini-Fantoni, Indianapolis Museum of Art; Maria Ribas, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona; Peter Gorgels, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Chris Michaels, National Gallery; Daryl Karp, Museum of Australian Democracy; Seb Chan, Cooper-Hewitt, NYC; Francesca Rosenberg, MoMA; Pille Runnel, Estonian Museum; JiaJia Fei, Jewish Museum, NYC; Ken Arnold, Medical Museion, Copenhagen.

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