Alfonsina Martínez
Conference Report. December 2025
The 57th Annual CIMAM Conference 2025, held in Turin, was for me a collective exercise in reflection on the challenges, possibilities, and tensions currently shaping cultural institutions and artistic practices. Under the title Enduring Game: Expanding New Models of Museum Making, the conference brought together a series of encounters and working spaces that invited arts and museum professionals to look inward and to sustain a shared critical inquiry into how museums and cultural spaces might rethink their ways of operating within an increasingly complex global context.
From the very first day—when Chus Martínez emphasized that this was not a space meant solely for listening to lectures, but rather for actively working together—articulated around the theme Doing less vs. doing differently, there was a clear focus on questioning ideas often taken for granted and on shifting attention toward the qualitative dimensions of curatorial work. This move away from a quantitative logic toward a more attentive engagement with processes was articulated, among other voices, by Françoise Vergès, whose inaugural keynote underscored the urgency of reconfiguring institutional priorities within museums. This impulse translated beautifully into the subsequent breakout sessions, where participants were randomly grouped to discuss specific issues; in my case, the conversations revolved around institutional authority and how it might be rethought to respond more precisely to the urgencies facing museums, cultural spaces, and their publics.
In the days that followed, the interventions of Elizabeth A. Povinelli and Mariana Mazzucato opened an interdisciplinary dialogue that made it possible to think of the museum not only as a cultural space, but as an agent operating within broader social, economic, and political systems. Hearing critical interventions alongside reflections on institutional mission and public value brought forward a very concrete question for contemporary institutional practice: how to sustain a deep critical consciousness without neutralizing it when translated into operational models, and how to imagine forms of action and public responsibility without diluting the political complexity that such critique makes visible.
The second day’s session, Mapping Desires, functioned not only as a platform for listening to diverse positions, but also as a space for encountering other possible ways of making museums. The presentations highlighted practices that do not seek to be integrated into or legitimized by existing narratives, but instead operate from an affirmative stance, questioning and displacing the habitual frameworks through which museums produce discourse, and proposing modes of work grounded in responsibility, agency, and dignity.
Attending CIMAM’s annual conference was deeply meaningful not only because of the density of the topics addressed, but also because of the ways participants were invited to think and work together. Through group discussions, informal exchanges, and visits to various cultural institutions across Turin, the conference sustained a rhythm of reflection that extended beyond formal sessions and allowed me to recognize how shared debates take on different nuances depending on the contexts from which they are lived.
Rather than offering closed answers, CIMAM 2025 left open a set of necessary questions about how cultural institutions are being built today and from where that work is carried out. In this willingness to think in process—rather than to fix conclusions—lies, perhaps, one of the most valuable contributions of the encounter.
Thank you, CIMAM. Thank you, Mrs. Patty Cisneros. This opportunity offered not only learning, but perspective.
Biography
Alfonsina Martínez is a visual arts professional with ten years of experience in collection research and exhibition project coordination. Trained in Fine Arts and Graphic Design, her career has been closely tied to cultural institutions in the Dominican Republic.
Between 2022 and 2025, she served as Exhibition Coordinator at the Centro Cultural de España in Santo Domingo, where she managed the exhibition program and related public activities, working closely with artists, researchers, and designers. Recent projects include Hojas de un Diario Viajero, a project based on the life of Abigail Mejía, a Dominican transatlantic woman from the early 20th century; FASE UNO by Juan Butten, a reflection on environmental pollution through miniatures made with found waste materials; and Lecturas de la calle El Conde, a multidisciplinary exhibition exploring memory, symbolism, and urban life.
Prior to this, she spent more than six years at Centro León in Santiago, where she was part of the team responsible for cataloguing and researching the Eduardo León Jimenes Visual Arts Collection. There, she also collaborated on landmark exhibitions such as the 28th Concurso de Arte Eduardo León Jimenes, Ser Oscar de la Renta, and the traveling show La Muñeca Viajera.
Her practice is grounded in collaboration, context, and care. She is interested in curatorial methodologies that engage with Caribbean identity, memory, and material culture.
Alfonsina Martínez, Coordinator at Fundación Alberto Cruz in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, has been awarded by Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC).