Ali Hegazy

The CIMAM Annual Conference was one of the most important meetings I attended recently. This was my first time with CIMAM. The speakers were highly professional. The workshops brought up very important topics and yielded important results.

One of the most important issues was the attempt to find a solution to the conflict between the director of the museum and whom responsible of the institution in case of private funding by private institutions, and especially if it is a government museum, and how could CIMAM support this. It was emphasized that the government and sponsors should be separated in terms of funding for museums are non-profit organizations.

There has been an extensive discussion under what circumstances the museum can offer private collections owned by sponsors, and how to control it in a way that does not harm the museum. It has been concluded that there is little risk if this is within the scope of a large institutional work under the umbrella of CIMAM as the largest entity in the world on such matters, of course, there will be complementarity between these bases and standards and between governments in different laws and regulations. CIMAM initiated better support for museums in maintaining the organization's independence from the external influence of sponsors.

The whole conference was useful in everything, especially in workshops, panel discussions, and discussion topics. In particular, I think it is better in the upcoming events to put more space for workshops for their importance. As I think it is necessary to exceed the period of the conference for the visits of the museums in the host city and to integrate better relations between guests and members of CIMAM.

As I explained earlier in my motivation for the grant, it was the similarity between this year's conference topics and the policy of the Museum of Fine Arts in Alexandria, which I have been doing for nearly five years. The museum is already in transition after a period of conflict in the revolutions of the Arab world, that led to interaction between the museum and the community that was because political conditions that Egypt passes through. The conference allowed me to know many artists and curators, and through discussions, I knew many things to re-interact between the museum and the surrounding community.