Towards a Healthy Museum
- Wednesday 31 May at 15:00 hrs. CEST
- Register here
Checking up on management concepts, matrixed organizations, and museum’s working practices and environments.
We assume that the forms of organization in a museum's culture embody the values we propose in our missions and programs. But do they embody those values?
Are the practices of the working museum really enabling their teams to stay motivated, and to grow and develop their skills in a positive way? Are museums investing in re-thinking their internal governance? Can change in a museum's programming, the communication of their values, and their appeal to the communities really happen without a transformation of internal structures?
With these questions as a starting point, we would like to initiate a series of discussions that positively affect the contemporary work environment and stimulate practices that are oriented toward the well-being of museum teams.
In this context, we want to address how we work, the structures we employ, the tools we use, the involvement of teams in the creative processes, their well-being, and the fulfillment quota at work. While doing this work it is as important to embrace transformation, as it is to name issues that may affect bad practices, such as the relation of payment to performance. How do we ensure that a healthy museum is the future museum? We would like to engage in this conversation with you to proactively imagine and define how we could address shifts in the working cultures of museums.
Speakers
- Salma Tuqan, Deputy Director at Delfina Foundation and newly appointed Director, Nottingham Contemporary, UK.
- Malgorzata Ludwisiak, Artistic Director, The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland.
- Kitty Scott, Independent Curator, Ottawa, Canada.
Moderated by Chus Martínez, Director, Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel, Switzerland.
CIMAM 2023 Rapid Response Webinars are made possible with the support from the Getty Foundation through its Connecting Professionals/Sharing Expertise initiative.
Biographies
Salma Tuqan
Salma Tuqan is a contemporary art and design curator and cultural strategist. She is Director of Nottingham Contemporary, a leading centre of contemporary art in Europe. Prior to this, she was Deputy Director of Delfina Foundation, an interdisciplinary non profit dedicated to facilitating artistic exchange and developing creative practice through residencies, exhibitions and public programming. From 2011 – 2019 she worked as the Contemporary Middle East Curator of art and design at the V&A.
She works closely with cultural organisations on strategy and is a committee member of the Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin American Research at the British Museum (London), Arab Image Foundation (Beirut), The Khatt Foundation (Amsterdam), Art on the Underground (London) and Rivers Institute (New Orleans), Strategic Advisor to NuMu (Guatemala City) and former trustee of the Crossway Foundation (London) and The Palestinian Museum (Birzeit).
Chus Martínez
Born in Spain, Chus Martínez has a background in philosophy and art history. She is currently the Head of the Institute of Art of the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, Switzerland, and Artistic Director of Ocean Space, Venice, a space spearheaded by TBA21–Academy, as well as curator at large at The Vuslat Foundation in Istambul.
She sits on the advisory boards of numerous international art institutions, including Castello di Rivoli, Turin; De Appel, Amsterdam; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin; and Museum der Moderne, Salzburg. She has been the Chief Curator at El Museo Del Barrio, New York and dOCUMENTA (13) Head of Department. Previously she was Chief Curator at MACBA, Barcelona, Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein. Martínez has organized numerous exhibitions and publications with contemporary artists. She lectures and writes regularly including numerous catalogue texts and critical essays, and is a regular contributor to international journals.
Recent publications are Like This. Natural Intelligence As Seen by Art. Hatje Cantz Verlag (2022); The Wild Book of Inventions, Sternberg Press (2020), Corona Tales. Let Life Happen to You, Lenz, (2021).
Kitty Scott
I have been active in the museum field with a focus on contemporary art for over 30 years.
After earning my MA, Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art (1995), I held posts including Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and Chief Curator at the Serpentine Gallery, London, UK. During my tenure as Director of Visual Arts at The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2007-2012), Canada, I oversaw the artist residency program, the Walter Phillips Gallery and the Banff International Curatorial Institute. In 2012, I was a core agent for Germany’s dOCUMENTA (13) and hosted its Retreat at Banff.
Following this, I worked as Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada (2012-2019), where I developed an international contemporary art program and worked closely with patrons to build the collection of international, Canadian and Indigenous contemporary art. I curated Geoffrey Farmer’s exhibition at the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2017) and, together with Sally Tallant, the Liverpool Biennial (2018).
Since 2020, I am Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the National Gallery of Canada, where I oversee the Library, Curatorial and Publication departments. I have organized many group and solo exhibitions including artists such as Francis Alÿs, Kevin Beasley, Janet Cardiff, Paul Chan, Peter Doig, Brian Jungen, Janice Kerbel, Ragnar Kjartansson, Duane Linklater, Ken Lum, Gordon Matta-Clark, Silke Otto-Knapp, Ron Terada, and Haegue Yang. I have contributed to many catalogues, books and journals.
Throughout this time, I have understood my role as curator to entail wider professional mentoring and development, whether through participation in CIMAM’s conferences, teaching at curatorial training programs, or serving as an adviser to younger colleagues across the globe.
Malgorzata Ludwisiak
I am an art historian, curator, art critic, an expert in museum management and academic teacher. Since January 2023, I’m the Artistic Director of Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. I was a Chief Curator of Modern Art Department in the National Museum in Gdansk (2021-2022), where I was responsible for three venues for modern and contemporary art. As a director of Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw (2014-2019), along with the team we were looking for both experimental programming and new institutional formats. As a vice-director of the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz (2008-2014), I was responsible mainly for developing public program, education and audience development. Among curated projects, I am especially proud of: contributing to CIMAM conferences (2021 and 2022); an international public program "Curating Institution" (2016-2019, CCA in Warsaw); an exhibition "El Hadji Sy. At First I Thought I Was Dancing" (2016, CCA in Warsaw) reflecting on questions of community and performativity seen through a lens of Dakar, and "Correspondences. Modern Art and Universalism" (with Jaroslaw Lubiak; 2012-13, Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz), which created a dialogue between two collections of 20th and 21st century art: of Kunstmuseum Bern and Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, applying Walter Benjamin’s notion of passages as a method for re-reading modernity and the very status of an art work. What most interests me in my theoretical research and practical approach is a present and future social role of museums – especially in the face of the climate catastrophe.
Rapid Response Webinars allow CIMAM members to continue discussing the most urgent concerns and questions affecting the modern and contemporary art museum community at this time. This initiative responds to CIMAM’s spirit and commitment to be a platform for global discussion, a space for sharing and connecting, learning, and encouraging cooperation.
Rapid Response Webinars are free of cost for CIMAM members. Non-Members can attend by paying 10,00€ that will be deducted from their membership fee if they join CIMAM in the next 3 months.
Sessions are recorded and posted in the Members Only section of the CIMAM website for those who missed the time.