Vikash Kumar

Thank you CIMAM for the opportunity to attend the CIMAM annual conference 2017 at the National Gallery of Singapore. I have been doing major international conferences in India for almost a decade now but I am truly impressed the way the whole conference has been managed in terms of communication, arrangements and hospitality.

It was indeed a great platform which provided plenty of networking opportunities. Many of us have got to know museum professionals and scholars from different parts of the world and have shared with them our areas of interests and work. We have also explored the opportunity of collaboration and developing some projects of cultural exchange etc. Having worked as a Curator at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi (India’s biggest modern and contemporary art museum) I have noticed many issues in the museums of this region. During my conversation with the museum leaders at the mentorship and workshop I have shared those with them and have got some positive response.

We have discussed about creating wider networking, Guidelines for museum reforms, Enabling curatorial exchange programme and also the trivial issue of loaning of the art works within museum network.

Conference contents were good, discussions were very good. Great to hear the assumptions put forth by Nikos Papastergiadis during his keynote. The idea of cosmopolitanism Vs Naturalism or the creation of a hypersensitive city is the major concerns of the contemporary society. Also, the current role of a museum needs to be looked at whether it should act as relics of the past or we should break this notion and build a museum which is in tandem with the contemporaneity. Patrick's keynote has given an overview of arts of Philippine which was really enriching. Suhanya’s and Donna De Salvo’s experiences of sharing the building of collection were truly inspiring. Tiffany Chung’s presentation about the censorship issue is really worth understanding the situation and has served as a focal point of learning for the curators and museum administration who are dealing with the works which could barge in to the line of

censorship in the respective cities and societies.

The networking lunch and the workshops were well planned and have opened up many opportunities which have helped the younger curators like us who have little physical exposure to the outside world.

All the best to CIMAM for this great initiative!