Museums Beyond Limits: Imagining Repair Across Cultures, Ecologies and Knowledges

NGZ FRONT IMAGE
National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe

CIMAM 2026 Annual Conference
20-22 November, Harare, Zimbabwe

Conference Abstract

Museums Beyond Limits: Imagining Repair Across Cultures, Ecologies and Knowledges

In an era marked by planetary precarity, political volatility, and intensifying epistemic contestation, museums are being called to operate beyond inherited limits: of nation, discipline, and authority.

Museums Beyond Limits: Imagining Repair Across Cultures, Ecologies and Knowledges proposes repair as a radical, plural, and ongoing practice grounded in relationality, care, and accountability. As institutions historically shaped by colonial extraction and classificatory regimes, museums now face urgent demands to repair fractured relationships: between communities and institutions, between human and more-than-human worlds, and between dominant and marginalised ways of knowing. This conference invites participants to consider how museum practice might exceed its conventional boundaries to engage these entangled crises.

Situated in Harare; a city whose histories of colonial dispossession and decolonial resurgence offer a powerful lens on cultural resilience, the 2026 CIMAM conference foregrounds contexts where limits have long been contested, negotiated, and reimagined. Here, repair is not singular or universal, but situated, dialogic, and often incomplete.

What does it mean for museums to move beyond limits in order to enact repair? How might institutions cultivate ethical forms of co-existence in contexts marked by historical rupture? In what ways can museum practices contribute to ecological and epistemic justice, while remaining accountable to diverse communities and knowledge systems? And how might we imagine repair when the boundaries between cultures, ecologies, and knowledges are porous, unstable, and in flux?

Bringing together practitioners, scholars, and cultural workers, this gathering seeks to open new conversations on how museums can act as sites of critical reflection, collective care, and transformative possibility in a world that demands new ways of relating, knowing, and repairing.

The 58th CIMAM Annual Conference will be held from 20 to 22 November 2026 in Harare, hosted by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe under the auspices of the Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe as the Main Partner, with the Generous Support of the Higherlife Foundation, Mercedes Vilardell as a Friend of CIMAM, and the Harare International School (HIS) as Venue Partner.

Additional supporters will be announced in the coming weeks, including organisations and individuals contributing to the CIMAM Annual Conference in Harare and its post-conference tour program.

The CIMAM 2026 Annual Conference contents are conceived and designed by a Content Steering Committee of 11 professionals, whose collective expertise guides the development of the conference’s themes, formats, and program.

  • Raphael Chikukwa, Executive Director, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe, and CIMAM Board member.
  • Elvira Dyangani Ose (Chair), Director, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain, and CIMAM Board member.
  • Sunjung Kim, Artistic Director, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, South Korea, and CIMAM Board member.
  • Renée Akitelek Mboya, Collaborative Editor, Wali Chafu Collective, Nairobi, Kenya, and Kigali, Rwanda.
  • Fadzai Muchemwa, Deputy Director and Curator of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe.
  • Paula Nascimento, Independent Curator, Luanda, Angola.
  • Smooth Nzewi, The Steven and Lisa Tananbaum Curator in Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, United States.
  • Marie Hélène Pereira, Senior Curator (Performative Practices), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, based in Dakar, Senegal, and Berlin, Germany.
  • Stephanie Rosenthal, Director, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and CIMAM Board member.
  • Suzana Sousa, Independent Curator, Luanda, Angola.
  • Jochen Volz, Director, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, and CIMAM Board member.