CIMAM Connects 2025
Scheduled and Proposed Topics for the 2025 CIMAM Connects Series
CIMAM Connects is an exclusive communication platform for CIMAM members.
Learning from Nature: Rethinking Institutions in a More-Than-Human World
Led by Krisztián Gábor Török, Curator of MODEM - Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts, Debrecen, Hungary.
📅 Monday, April 28, 2025
- 🕘8 am CEST, Budapest
- 🕘7 am BST, London
- 🕘11 am AST, Doha
- 🕘1.30 pm IST, Bengaluru
- 🕘4 pm AEST, Sydney
- 🕘3 pm JST, Tokyo
As cultural institutions increasingly engage with ecological themes, the question arises:Are cultural institutions truly learning from nature—or simply representing it? Imagine if museums, biennials, and cultural spaces moved beyond symbolic gestures toward deep, systemic transformation, drawing on nature not as metaphor but as methodology.
This CIMAM Connects session, proposed and led by Krisztián Gábor Török, explores how art institutions can evolve from static repositories into regenerative, adaptive ecosystems—living systems that mirror the complexity, fluidity, and resilience of the natural world. Inspired by artistic and curatorial practices grounded in ecological thinking, local and indigenous knowledge, and site-specific engagement, this conversation asks:
Beyond Representation → How can representation shift from an anthropocentric perspective ? How can institutions embody nature’s regenerative, self-organizing principles rather than simply depict them?
Beyond Institutional Borders → What can museums learn from ecosystems, multi-species relationships, and non-human governance models?
Beyond Human-Centric Learning → Can institutional structures adopt nature-inspired strategies such as mutualism, succession, or adaptive feedback?
Beyond the Museum as Archive → How can cultural spaces act as ecological agents rather than extractive keepers of heritage?
Bringing together artists, architects, curators, and cultural practitioners from diverse regions and disciplines, this session will unpack what it means for institutions to not just respond to environmental crises—but to transform with them. It challenges us to rethink how we organize, collaborate, and sustain ourselves, not just as human collectives, but as participants in a deeply interconnected planetary network.
If museums and cultural spaces are to remain relevant amid climate breakdown and ecological collapse, they must evolve—becoming spaces of reciprocity, care, and adaptation. How can we move from representation to integration, from display to embodied practice? Let’s think through these questions together.
Visit the Members Only dedicated section to find the link to register for the upcoming sessions.
Museums at the end of the world / Museos en el fin del mundo
Led by Ana Ruiz
📅 Tuesday, June 3 2025
- 🕘 9am Bogotá, Colombia (UTC-5)
- 🕘 11am Buenos Aires, Argentina (GMT-3)
- 🕘 2pm Dakar, Senegal (GMT)
- 🕘 4pm Rome, Italy (CEST)
- 🕘 7.30pm Calcuta, India (GMT+5.30)
On January 28, 2025, the Doomsday Clock was set 89 seconds before midnight. What does this mean for art museums, devoted to the "future" through the conservation of collections and artistic heritage? What does the Global South have to say about this —what can we learn and what can we teach? Finally, how to honor, nurture, and be nurtured by our local, regional, and global contexts, and serve as platforms for societies to create, expand, and articulate possible presents?
The proposal for this CIMAM Connects, proposed and led by Ana Ruiz, Curator at the Medellín Museum of Modern Art, MAMM, arises from the feeling —more or less generalized— that the future is vanishing. “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Capitalism” would say Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek.
The end of the world seems very real while some old known evils have taken on a strength not seen since the Second World War. This polycrisis presents itself with the resurgence of fascism, genocides, environmental collapse and climate crisis, neocolonialism, inequality, and exploitation of resources in the name of development and technological well-being, which together have eroded what was left of confidence in international institutions and States as social structures supposed to work for the common good.
Although it might seem that Art and contemporary museums have nothing to do with this —some could say that they are not directly to blame, and they do not seem to have any real weight in political and economic decision-making— they are institutions that, on the one hand, have their origins in the colonial systems that have shaped the world we live in today (so maybe they should question their current role on them), and on the other hand, have evolved to become agorae, spaces with a potential for fostering critical thinking and for articulating new/diverse knowledge(s) and worldviews. Art museums’ vision and impact vary immensely according to the region of the world and the budget in which they operate; contemporary art practices have also changed in the last decades, and the Art world today is much more polyphonic than it was a few decades ago.
This CIMAM Connects session wants to bring together curators and museum workers from different parts of the world, from both the Global North and South, to discuss the specific issues affecting their respective contexts. Let's think about feasible, short-term strategies to co-operate and col(labor)ate, and find actions in the present that connect knowledge(s), technologies, and peoples from diverse contexts to create agendas for our current times, in which the question of the present is, literally, vital.
Sessions conducted earlier in 2025
Recap of the Travel Grantees at the 56th Annual Conference in Los Angeles and What's Next
📅 Friday 28, February 2025
- 🕘 7am Sao Paolo, Brazil
- 🕘 11am Central European Time
- 🕘 12pm Helsinki, Finland
- 🕘 7pm Tokio, Japan
The CIMAM Travel Grant Program has been crucial in fostering new professional relationships and cross-institutional collaborations. Many LA Annual Conference travel grantees have expressed the need to maintain these connections beyond the event, ensuring that discussions and interactions evolve into long-term, meaningful exchanges.
Ramiro Camelo, Curator and Project Manager at Myymälä2, Helsinki, Finland proposes to lead this CIMAM Connects to continue the spirit of collaboration and camaraderie established during the conference by creating a space for ongoing engagement, knowledge-sharing, and future planning.
Key Objectives of the Session:
Share ideas on organizing a steering group of LA Travel grantees to participate in the 57th CIMAM Annual Conference in 2025. This group will be responsible for monitoring, facilitating, and advising travel grantees interested in attending the conference in Turin.
Additionally, we will conduct a follow-up discussion on the LA Annual Conference to address key concerns, findings, and conclusions in a more relaxed atmosphere.
Women in Art: Power, Trajectory, and Transformation
Led by Maya Juracan
📅 Thursday, March 27 2025
- 🕘 9am Guatemala (CST)
- 🕘 12pm Sao Paolo (BRT)
- 🕘 4pm Berlin (CET)
- 🕘 6pm Nairobi (EAT)
- 🕘 6am Los Angeles (PDT)
This talk seeks to discuss the fundamental role of women curators and museum directors in redefining the artistic and cultural field. Through their leadership, they have driven new ways of working, promoting more inclusive, collaborative, and diverse structures within some institutions. Additionally, they have challenged traditional narratives, creating spaces for transformation and dialogue that have enriched the way art is conceived, managed, and presented to the public.
Maya Juracán, Director of the Biennial in Resistance, Santa Lucía Milpas Altas, Guatemala.