Museum Futures

This free event is offered by the SGSAH Cultural and Museum studies Discipline+ Catalyst.

Open to all, a warm welcome is especially extended to students not currently collaborating with museums and related institutions. No advance preparation is required.

The cost-of-living crisis, climate and sustainability, anti-racism and decolonisation, and wellbeing are critical issues shaping innovation in the cultural sector. This workshop will support current PhD students to consider how their research agendas and skills could support urgent priorities being tackled by museums and related institutions. Through short presentations by the event leads, the workshop will consider the ‘futures turn’ in critical heritage studies; share professional perspectives of museum projects seeking to build resilient futures; and cover practical advice for collaborative relationships with museums and related institutions. This will be followed by a visit to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum where participants will speculatively (re)imagine futures-orientated interventions. The workshop will provide conceptual and practical space to support students to connect their research interests and skills to futures-focused agendas using the museum to focus discussion and activity.

Guest Speaker: Mike Rutherford, Curator of Anatomy and Zoology, Hunterian Zoology Museum. Mike will speak to us about repatriation in natural history collections.

Please note: This workshop will not offer hands-on training in object or collections research. Instead, it is a provocation for researchers to think (practically and conceptually) with and through museums future-focused perspectives. We will also expand our discussions into the museum through student-led investigation of current displays in light of workshop themes and issues.

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Host or Publisher Cultural and Museum Studies Catalyst, SGSAH