Museums: Dead Spaces or Cultural Powerhouses?

Museums Dead Spaces or Cultural Powerhouses_WEB

Museums: Dead Spaces or Cultural Powerhouses? Examining the Social Relevance and the Mission of Contemporary Art Institutions Today

🗓️ Wednesday, July 15, 2026

  • 10:00 am Buenos Aires, Argentina (ART)
  • 3:00 pm Europe (CEST)
  • 5:00 pm Abu Dhabi (GST)

Abstract

Museums are no longer confined to their traditional role as institutions for collecting, preserving, and displaying objects, but are increasingly expected to function as active participants in societal development. But how? Can museums achieve their goal when political classes doubt them more and more? How can we revert certain assumptions and lobby—even with media and politics— to foster a very much needed social cohesion and democratic regeneration?

Guest Panelists:

  • Defne Ayas, Director, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
  • Brook Andrew, First Nations artist and Adjunct Curator, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
  • Cecilia Bengolea, Artist, Argentina.

Moderated by Stephanie Rosenthal, Director of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project and CIMAM Board Member.

Rapid Response Webinars are free of cost for CIMAM members.

Sessions are recorded and posted in CIMAM's Members Only section for those who missed the time.

Biographies:

Defne Ayas

Defne Ayas is a curator whose practice operates at the intersection of contemporary art, performance, new media, and politics. Originally from Istanbul and currently based in Eindhoven, she is Director of the Van Abbemuseum and Senior Curator-at-Large at Performa, New York.

Ayas has held leadership, curatorial, and advisory roles across major institutions in Europe, Asia, and the United States. She was Artistic Director of the 13th Gwangju Biennale (co-curated with Natasha Ginwala), Curator-at-Large at the V-A-C Foundation, and Director of Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art) in Rotterdam. At Melly, she developed long-term, research-driven exhibitions and performance programs with artists including Alexandre Singh, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Eric Baudelaire, Rana Hamadeh, Michael Portnoy, Bik Van der Pol, and Qiu Zhijie.

In 2007, she co-founded Arthub Asia, initiating projects such as Cao Fei’s RMB City Opera, Double Infinity (with the Van Abbemuseum), and the New Silk Roads symposium. As a long-term curator with Performa, she has developed programs spanning performance, architecture, writing, and public discourse. Earlier in her career, she worked at the New Museum in New York.

Her curatorial practice has extended across biennials and large-scale exhibitions in New York, Shanghai, Vilnius, and Gwangju, and smaller ones in Venice, Istanbul and Moscow. Across contexts, she focuses on performance, institutional experimentation, and transnational dialogue, developing expanded curatorial formats that bring together artistic, social, and political imaginaries.

Brook Andrew

Brook Andrew is an artist whose conceptual practice shifts across photography, performance, moving image, installation, public space and museum intervention. Grounded in his experiences as a Wiradjuri and Ngunnawal (First Nations) kweer (queer) person from southeastern Australia, Brook's practice is sustained by deep collaboration with artists, communities and friends.

Recent commissions include bunyiyanha at Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO, Chatou (2025), and NGAAY/SEE for the Liverpool Biennial (2023) as well as exhibitions I Still Dream of Lost Biographies at Autograph, London (2025-26) and 65:000 years: A Short History of Australian Art (2025) at the Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne.

As a curator, Brook was the artistic director of the First Nations and artist-led NIRIN: the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020), international advisor for the Sámi Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) and curator of YOYI Care, Repair, Heal at the Gropius Bau (2022). In 2024, he led the forum Indigenous Visions, during the 2024 Venice Biennale (a collaboration between Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and Museums and Collections, University of Melbourne) and he curated Seeds of Memory for Abu Dhabi Art 2025.

He is the current Director of Reimagining Museums and Collections at the University of Melbourne and Adjunct Curator ngurambang-ayinya (First Nations) for Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

Cecilia Bengolea

Cecilia Bengolea (Buenos Aires, 1979) is an artist working across performance, video, sculpture, and dance. Her practice explores the body, individually and collectively, as a medium of memory, empathy, and emotional exchange. Using movement as a form of animated sculpture, she conceives dance and performance as sites where symbolic, social, and natural energies converge, with her own body often positioned as both subject and object.

She has collaborated with artists such as Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Jeremy Deller, and numerous dancehall performers such as Craig Black Eagle and Oshane Overload. Her choregraphic work in collaboration with François Chaignaud was awarded by the Prix de la Critique (Paris, 2010) and recieved the Young Artist Prize at the Gwangju Biennial (2014). Bengolea has been commissioned choreographic pieces by Ballet de Marseille, Ballet de Lyon, Ballet de Lorraine, and Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal.

Bengolea’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Guggenheim Bilbao, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Palais de Tokyo, Dia Art Foundation, Bourse de Commerce – Collection Pinault, Museo Reina Sofía, MUDAM Luxembourg, Art Basel Parcours, Desert X, and the Gwangju and São Paulo Biennials, among many others.

Her work can be found in major private and public collections, including Pinault collection, Museo Reina Sofia, Kadist France, Mudam Luxembourg, TBA21 Academy, MIRE - Fond cantonal d’art contemporain, The Vinyl Factory, Le CNAP, Le Consortium, Fiorucci Art Trust, Tank Shanghai, Fundación Arco, Konstmuseum Boras and the MONA - Museum of Old and New Art of Tasmania among others.

In 2023, she was a guest teacher for the Performance master’s program of the Architecture University of Venice, Italy. She lives and works in Paris and Buenos Aires.

Recommended readings:

History of movement, Cecilia Bengolea

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CIMAM 2026 Rapid Response Webinars are made possible with the support from the Getty Foundation through its Connecting Professionals/Sharing Expertise initiative.