"The Museum Watch Committee is an observatory of what is happening, and we have a symbolic voice from CIMAM"

"The Museum Watch Committee is an observatory of what is happening, and we have a symbolic voice from CIMAM, which is both a capacity and a responsibility, so we have to be extremely careful about when we can use it. We can't address every injustice, we have to limit ourselves to a few cases. We then try to highlight the importance of what we see by formulating a reflection that makes public sense."

"In the Museum Watch Committee, we try to inform ourselves well. To start with, we have this incredible CIMAM network of colleagues that we can trust and that may give us different possible perspectives. We think about effectively supporting our colleagues by analysing situations and referring back to healthy basics. These can be references to the ICOM Code of Ethics, governance good practices or essential features of contemporary art - wanting diversity – or museums – being a safe public space for debate and the autonomy of art."

Bart de Baere, Director, M HKA — Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerpen, Belgium

CIMAM’s Museum Watch Committee: What We Do and Why We Do it

The session took place on Thursday 27 May 2021.

Following an extraordinary year in which all museums have faced unprecedented challenges, the need for an active voice advocating for transparent, fair, and accountable governance of museums as essential civic spaces is needed now more than ever. Museum Watch Committee provides a voice of our CIMAM Members in crisis by highlighting critical issues and generating debate and shared reflection on the key issues affecting museums today.

The Museum Watch Committee would like to invite CIMAM members to join them in a discussion on some of the most recent work undertaken by the CIMAM committee and a consideration of the role that the Committee can play in supporting the work of our community of contemporary art museum professionals.

Moderated by Sarah Glennie, panelists representing the Museum Watch working group will be Bart de Baere, Calin Dan, and Victoria Noorthoorn.

The 2020–2022 Museum Watch Committee consists of six board members of CIMAM:

• Bart de Baere, Director, M HKA — Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerpen, Belgium
• Calin Dan, General Director, MNAC Bucharest, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania
• Sarah Glennie, Director, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland
• Malgorzata Ludwisiak, Independent Art Critic, Curator, Ph.D, Warsaw, Poland
• Victoria Noorthoorn, Director, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Argentina
• Eugene Tan, Director, National Gallery Singapore and The Singapore Art Museum, Singapore

Watch the session recording at CIMAM's only member section.

About CIMAM’s Rapid Response Webinars

Started in 2020, CIMAM has taken the new virtual scenario as an opportunity to launch a series of online activities exclusively for our community to, now more than ever, reinforce the sense of connectivity through online meetings in a peer to peer environment to share, learn, and be inspired by the experiences of other CIMAM professionals.

For 2021, we have prepared a series of online sessions that will take place, nearly every month of the year. The next ones are:

• Thursday 22 July: Workshop with the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC).
• Thursday 30 September: Webinar hosted by the CIMAM working group on Sustainability and Ecology in Museum Practice.

More webinars to be announced soon.