First Speakers & Chronists Line-up Announced for CIMAM 2026

The CIMAM 2026 Annual Conference announces its first keynote speakers and, for the first time in the conference’s history, introduces the role of the Chronist.

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.

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 marginalized 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.

Conference Program

Each day will open with a keynote lecture that will set the tone, thematic framework, and direction for both the day’s program and the conference as a whole. Through their presentations, the keynote speakers will inspire, challenge, and engage attendees, foregrounding the critical questions and themes that shape the gathering.

This year, and for the first time in the history of the CIMAM Annual Conference, the role of the Chronist will be introduced — inspired by the Latin American and Iberian journalism tradition of the crónica: a journalistic and literary form that observes, interprets, and narrates events through a personal, critical, and reflective lens.

Throughout the conference, the Chronist will offer an interpretative reading of each day’s key discussions and insights, weaving together reflections from the keynote lectures, breakout sessions, and panel discussions, alongside audience contributions and the spontaneous moments that inevitably emerge within collective gatherings.

DAY 1 - Friday, November 20, 2026

Good Museum Practice

"Best practices" has long been defined by Western institutional norms, but in a world of asymmetrical power and cultural plurality, what does “best” mean, and for whom? Might “good practices” – implying effectiveness, adaptability, and context specificity – offer a better ethical framework? This session reconsiders the foundations of museum ethics and governance from multiple perspectives: Indigenous and community-based museologies, African and diasporic models of stewardship, and frameworks that prioritize care, reciprocity, and sustainability over ownership and authority. Participants will reflect on what it means to build institutions that do not merely preserve culture but genuinely embody cultural care as practice – in conservation, interpretation, and collaboration.

• Keynote Speaker: Gabi Ngcobo, Director, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
• Chronist: Meleko Mokgosi, Contemporary Artist and Yale Associate Professor, Yale University, Wellesley, United States.
  

DAY 2 - Saturday, November 21, 2026

Tools of Transformation

Museums are not only custodians of the past; they are laboratories for social and ecological transformation. This session foregrounds the tools, technologies, and strategies that enable museums to act as catalysts for change. From digital innovation to participatory co-creation, from new material practices to curatorial activism, we ask: how can museums operate transformation rather than simply represent it? By centering African and Global South methodologies of making, storytelling, and adaptation, this day explores transformation as both process and practice, rooted in the local but resonant across the globe.

• Keynote Speaker: Hou Hanru, Independent Curator and Writer, Paris, France / Rome, Italy.

DAY 3 - Sunday, November 22, 2026

Radical Hospitality

In African philosophical traditions, hospitality is a condition for collective flourishing. The principle of ubuntu, that one becomes human through others, extends beyond the human to include land, memory, and the more-than-human world. Against ongoing histories of extraction and colonial violence in cultural institutions, radical hospitality positions relationality as both an ethic of being and a strategy of doing. This day asks how museums might practice openness amid exclusion, generosity within scarcity; and what it would mean to inhabit them not as sites of authority, but as shared dwellings for contested histories and possible futures.

• Keynote Speaker: Dr. Thembinkosi Goniwe, Art Historian, Curator, and Writer, Rhodes University Grahamstown, South Africa.
• Chronist: Dr. Memory Biwa, Historian and Artist, Bravebird Research, Pungwe Listening, Berlin, Germany.

CIMAM Contents Committee

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. They have also curated the conference’s invited speakers and guest program.

• Raphael Chikukwa, Executive Director, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe, and CIMAM Board member.
• Elvira Dyangani Ose (Chair), Curator and Artistic Director of the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial 2026-2027, 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 / 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, Berlin, Germany / Dakar, Senegal.
• 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.