"Having the opportunity to listen, meet and exchange with professionals from around the world has been a very enriching experience"

18 January 2023

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Maria Lucia Aleman, Executive Director, Museo De Arte Contemporáneo De Panamá, Panama, Panama.

"Having the opportunity to listen, meet and exchange with art and museum professionals from around the world has been a very enriching experience. It facilitates the creation of new professional networks and creates a sense of belonging to a global community which I know I can now reach out to as a support system."

Maria Lucia Aleman, Executive Director, Museo De Arte Contemporáneo De Panamá, Panama, Panama.

In 2022, 41 contemporary art curators, researchers, and museum directors from 24 different countries were awarded to attend the CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference.

The CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference, titled "The Attentive Museum. Permeable Practices for a Common Ground", was held in Mallorca (Balearic Islands), Spain on 11–13 November, hosted by Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma.

Maria Lucia Aleman's conference report

Having the opportunity to listen, meet and exchange with art and museum professionals from around the world has been a very enriching experience. It facilitates the creation of new professional networks and creates a sense of belonging to a global community which I know I can now reach out to as a support system.

One of my major takeaways is that regardless of the financial source of income (private, government, NGO) all museums can be an agent of social transformation and restorative social justice, that must connect to their local context needs to determine the most urgent matters and co-create opportunities to give visibility, express, reunite, create awareness, preserve and promote its communities ideas, actions, memory. In this sense, museums have the possibility of being lighthouse keepers of shared values and identities of a society. They are spaces of culture, creation, and knowledge sharing. And knowledge is freedom. When people have opportunities to access educational experiences, culture, and innovative ways of thinking and doing they have the power to decide their future.

A possible outcome of this experience is that I now have the possibility of reaching out to many museum and cultural professionals that I met at CIMAM. Discussing multiple issues with more experienced professionals is a great addition to my toolkit and therefore to MAC Panama´s advancement. It would be great to have a website exchange center so we can ask, share and listen to what others are working on and use these resources and online community.

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CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference hosted by Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma. Photo by Soni Martínez Payan.

In regards to future ideas, I would like to suggest and volunteer in the creation of a mentorship program for CIMAM members, as a way of sharing experiences, knowledge, practices, and contacts that could potentially facilitate our role as community agents of change. Many times our institutions play basic social, educational, and cultural roles and contribute to the big gaps that governments are unable to provide in these and more aspects. Mainly, we do this with very scarce resources. So these mentorships and networks are essential. Also, I was able to informally discuss international grant opportunities and believe that CIMAM could facilitate to its members a list of grants available for different types of institutions, geographies, programs, and so forth. At MAC Panama we have started a database that I could share so we can grow it and all benefit.