Registration is now open!
Titled The Co-Creative Museum: Social Agency, Ethics, and Heritage, the CIMAM 2023 Annual Conference will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 9–11 November, hosted by the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. The conference will be followed by a Post-Conference Tour to Salta, in the Argentinian North-West, on November 12–13, 2023.
The presentations and debates of the 55th CIMAM Annual Conference will be held on the mornings of 9–11 November 2023 from 9 a.m.–1 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. Ample time will be set aside for participation and dialogue. For the first time, simultaneous translation to and from Spanish and a crèche for children will be offered during the Conference sessions.
During the afternoon and evening sessions, a rich programme of visits will enable attendees to experience first-hand the vast spread of Argentina’s truly diverse multi-disciplinary art scene, including not only the visual arts but theatre, literature, film, dance, and experimental music.
→ Speaker biographies
→ Conference Abstract
→ Conference Program
→ Book your seat at CIMAM 2023!
Day 1. Thursday 9th November
How Can Museums Embrace their Social Responsibility? A Question from the Americas
How can museums become effective sites for playing out, debating, and tackling the issues raised by societies? How can museums be affirmed as brave spaces for freedom of expression, the development of honest inquiry, and the expansion of creative imaginations as they occupy their roles as producers of knowledge in dialogue with artists and civil societies? On this first day of the Conference, we look forward to setting forth holistic conceptions around how the museum can effectively make communities’ concerns its own in order to effectively respond and accompany their searches by shouldering social, cultural and educational – and decolonial! – responsibilities.
Guest Speakers
- Elvira Espejo Ayca Artist and Director, Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore, La Paz, Bolivia
- Pablo Lafuente Artistic Director, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Simon Njami Independent Curator, Paris, France
- Nicolás Testoni Director, Ferrowhite – museo taller, Bahía Blanca, Argentina
- Coco Fusco Artist and Professor, Cooper Union, Brooklyn, USA
Program of Visits
After the presentations on Day 1, an informal lunch will be hosted by Fundación Proa. After visiting its current exhibition, we will tour the booming Southern Art District and its numerous art institutions and alternative spaces in the historic neighbourhoods of San Telmo and La Boca.
From Proa, in small groups of 15–20 to allow meaningful dialogues between visitors and the hosts of the different spaces, we will be visiting Proa21, Fundación Andreani, Fundación Larivière Fotografía Latinoamericana, Fundación Forner-Bigatti, the art galleries Barro, Calvaresi, Constitución, Nora Fisch, Pasto and Alberto Sendrós, as well as the alternative spaces and residency programmes of the Fundación El Mirador, La Verdi and Munar, the studio of the late León Ferrari and more!
The day includes a special invitation to attend Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the magnificent Teatro Colón, acoustically one of the six most important opera houses in the world. With a powerful gender, social and political perspective, the performance is to be directed by renowned Brazilian director, Livia Sabag.
→ Speaker biographies
→ Conference Abstract
→ Conference Program
→ Book your seat at CIMAM 2023!
Day 2. Friday 10th November
The Role of Museums in Communities, Education, and Accessibility
The museum can be an active agent in understanding art partly as a vehicle for the construction of knowledge. What is the role of the arts and artists in education as a whole, and what is the role of education as endorsed by the museum? How can the museum become a catalyst for new notions of education? How can museums foster co-creative relationships with and among artists and the local communities of situated contexts? Over the course of Day 2, we access the experiences and philosophies of specialists in education, accessibility, and mental health as they weave the arts into their own practices of education, care, and healing.
Guest Speakers
- Luis Camnitzer Artist, Great Neck, USA
- Teresa Cisneros Senior Practice Manager, Culture Equity Diversity Inclusion, Wellcome Trust, London, UK
- Marie Hélène Pereira, Senior Curator (Performative Practices), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) (HWK), Berlin, Germany.
- Ana Gallardo Artist, Mexico City, Mexico
Program of Visits
After Conference on Day 2 and a tour of the Museo Moderno’s current exhibitions, there will be an informal lunch hosted by Malba. After a visit to its current exhibitions, we will explore the various museums along Museum Mile on Libertador Avenue and on towards Puerto Madero. From Malba, we will visit the Museo Eduardo Sívori in the beautiful Palermo Gardens, the Casa Victoria Ocampo/Fondo Nacional de las Artes, designed by architect Alejandro Bustillo, and the encyclopaedic Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. We will then head downtown to Arthaus and finish our museum tour with an evening reception hosted by Colección AMALITA, whose premises in Puerto Madero were designed by architect Rafael Viñoly to grace the port of Buenos Aires. For those with energy to spare, we will then venture into the realms of Tango and its classic late-night milongas!
→ Speaker biographies
→ Conference Abstract
→ Conference Program
→ Book your seat at CIMAM 2023!
DAY 3: Saturday 11 November
How Can Museums Collect, Preserve and Protect Cultural Heritage While Creating New Communities?
Day 3 is intended as an organic continuation of the debates and discussions begun during the second day of the Conference. Museums have a responsibility to preserve but also to honour situated histories, materials, and archives that embody past heritages and steer us towards different futures.
Museums are learning not only to preserve, but to become and remain respectful to the premises and values of the communities which such materials belong to. Can we implement different methodologies to question canonical and normative processes and so disrupt colonial legacies? Can we escape the logic of capitalism in our collections? Can we challenge our acquisition criteria and our conservation policies to accommodate the well-being of our planet? Can restitution be seen as a form of necessary healing and an opportunity to initiate a different dialogue with the past? What are the future mechanisms to implement the museum’s response in the event of wars or emergencies? Naming problems and proposing different approaches and methods has a generative effect by enabling us to collectively reflect on a museum capable of learning and transmitting how heritage is always related to an idea of the social situated not only in the past but in the future.
Guest Speakers
- Yto Barrada Artist, Brooklyn/Tanger, USA/Morocco.
- Marian Pastor Roces Curator and Principal Partner, TAOINC, Metropolitan Manila, Philippines.
- María Belén Correa, Director and Founder, Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina (Argentinian Trans Memory Archive), Hanover, Germany.
- Sidhi Vhisatya, Curator, Queer Indonesia Archive (QIA), Jimbaran, Bali, Indonesia.
- Luma Hamdan Director, Darat al Funun - The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman, Jordan.
- Claudia Zaldívar Director, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (MSSA), Santiago, Chile.
Program of Visits
The Museo Moderno is saving the most innovative programme for Day 3, for which it will spend the whole year preparing. This experience is being designed to offer an afternoon of tailor-made visits and meetings so that all 200+ professionals attending can enter into meaningful dialogues with a potentially vast number of actors from the cultural ecosystem of the arts in Argentina. With this in mind, we will be writing to all professionals travelling with a questionnaire about their artistic interests. In the months leading up to the Conference, the Museo Moderno’s curatorial team will be available for one-on-one conversations with every professional attending in order to provide information and feedback on artists, trends, movements, institutions, archives and projects. Starting in June, we will be inviting all attendees to access a website of Argentina’s modern and contemporary scene and the exhibitions and artists on view in November. We therefore strongly suggest you extend your stay in Buenos Aires at the height of spring for at least two more days to take full advantage of the rich programme being prepared by the capital’s 60+ art institutions and galleries.
Day 3 will then conclude with the CIMAM General Assembly and dinner in the eighteenth-century colonial monastery today housing the Fundación Mercedes Sosa, a stone’s throw from the Moderno. Dinner and the after-dinner party will be organized and supported by the Asociación de Amigos del Museo Moderno in honour of all the CIMAM travellers and local hosts taking part in this intense 3-day programme. All of us here in the Argentinian capital are already looking forward to welcoming you!
→ Speaker biographies
→ Conference Abstract
→ Conference Program
→ Book your seat at CIMAM 2023!
Post-Conference Tour
12-13 November, Salta
The Museo Moderno invites you to reserve a ticket for a Post-Conference Tour to Salta in the Argentinian North-West, 12–13 November 2023. Known as ‘Salta La Linda’ (Salta The Beautiful), the city is set in gorgeous Andean landscapes and showcases an exceptionally important tradition of visual arts informed by the landscape, local materials including red soils and clays, and natural dyes, indigenous local cultures in the realms of weaving and pottery, and major cultural crossovers with modern and contemporary art.
On Sunday, November 12, we will be taking an early flight from Jorge Newbery Airport in the heart of Buenos Aires (15 mins from the hotel) to Salta, where we will have the chance to visit the city’s standout spaces and exhibitions, including the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC) and the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Salta, which, among other shows, will be housing the group exhibition of Wichí artists Lhajus Lhenek, curated by the Wichí artists’ and poets’ collective Centro Cultural TEWOK from the north of Salta Province. We will also visit the legendary tapestry studio of ‘Pajita’ and Rodrigo García Bes, as well as the vital art space Remota, run by artist Guido Yannitto and gallery owner Gonzalo Elías.
On Monday, November 13, we will be setting off early in the morning and travelling in the comfort of coaches through one of the most spectacular mountainous landscapes in the world to the Andean town of Cafayate, home to a vibrant community of contemporary artists. We will pause along the way to enjoy the many views and places of interest, such as the Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat) and the Amphitheatre, a rock formation that will feature an on-site project by Cafayate-born artist Javier Soria Vázquez.
Lunch will be served in one of the local vineyards in the heart of the Calchaquí Valleys, after which we can take in the studio museum of the late artist Calixto Mamaní in the village. Finally, we will immerse ourselves in the open-air project by local artist Florencia Sadir. We then return to Salta to take an evening flight to Buenos Aires, arriving in the capital on Monday 13 November at 11.15 p.m.
→ Book your seat at CIMAM 2023!
Travel Grants to Buenos Aires
CIMAM offers over 50 Travel Grants to attend the CIMAM 2023 Annual Conference, titled The Co-Creative Museum: Social Agency, Ethics, and Heritage to take place from November 9th to 11th, hosted by the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
These grants are specifically intended for modern and contemporary art museum directors and curators, researchers, and independent curators whose expertise lies in contemporary art theory, collections, and museums, to support curatorial and research development by providing them with the opportunity to participate in the Annual Conference. This is where the most pressing concerns and innovative practices in contemporary art are explored and discussed.
Grants are generously supported by:
The Getty Foundation, Los Angeles
ArtHaus, Buenos Aires
Aimée Labarrere de Servitje, Mexico
Byucksan Cultural Foundation, Seoul
Eloisa Haudenschild, United States
Embassy of Brazil, Buenos Aires
Fernando Zobel de Ayala, Manila
Mercedes Vilardell, London/Mallorca
OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo
Saastamoinen Foundation, Helsinki
SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey, Istanbul
Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka
The deadline to apply is Sunday 11 June at 0:00 hrs. CEST.
→Read the Eligibility and Apply for a Travel Grant here
→ Application Form
→ About 2023 Travel Grant Funders
→ CIMAM 2023 Annual Conference
→ CIMAM Travel Grant Selection Committee
→ Questions at travelgrants@cimam.org
CIMAM's 2023 Annual Conference Hosts and Sponsors
The Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, under the auspices of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, is the main host and organizer of the next Annual Conference.
The programme and production of the 2023 Annual Conference are also being made possible with the generous support of the Museo Moderno’s Allied Partners, essential contemporary art museums and foundations in Buenos Aires – the Fundación Ama Amoedo and Colección AMALITA, Fundación Proa and Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) – and the Asociación Amigos del Moderno. Another important contributor is ArtHaus, whose substantial fellowship fund will enable a minimum of twenty Argentinian professionals to attend the Conference.
→ Book your seat at CIMAM 2023!
CIMAM 2023 Contents Committee
The contents of the 2023 Annual Conference have been thought and designed by the Contents Committee consisting of CIMAM Board members:
- Victoria Noorthoorn, (Chair of the Contents Committee), Director, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Amanda de la Garza, Director, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico.
- Clara M Kim, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, MOCA, Los Angeles, United States of America.
- Malgorzata Ludwisiak, Artistic Director, The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.
- Chus Martínez, Director, Art Gender Nature Institute HGK, Basel, Switzerland.
- Yu Jin Seng, Deputy Director (Curatorial & Research), National Gallery Singapore, Singapore.