"We believe that it is crucial to maintain human capital, which in due course, will return to Ukraine"

7 April 2022

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We believe that it is crucial to maintain human capital, which in due course, will return to Ukraine and rebuild the substance of Ukrainian culture and institutions.

We see the fragility of something that we think is permanent, and we are concerned about the abundance of artworks in museums and the lack of storage. War usually resolves these issues with a dramatic gesture of destruction, so several different actions take place on the European continent and are very much focused on Polish territory because of the proximity to Ukraine.

At ICOM, we focus on assisting refugees. In Poland today, we have 2.3 million Ukrainian refugees, some of whom are art historians and museum professionals, so we designed three-month scholarships targeting this group of professionals. We appealed to the international community for funds and have asked volunteers to act as guardian angels for each grantee to facilitate access to the museum community in a particular city or region of Poland.

Piotr Rypson, Adjunct Professor at New Media Department, Polish-Japanese Academy of Computer Technology. Curator at the Jewish Historical Institute, and Chair of ICOM Poland.

Mobile, Virtual, Ephemeral: Collections of the Future?

In the times of museums being burned down because of war or put at risk because of climate disaster effects – what is a meaning of a public art collection? Could we imagine a different definition of collecting, an alternative circulation of objects, or an art museum without art objects? What if museums start collecting narratives or if the collection is co-owned by the local or international communities? Asking such questions and speculating on possible answers seems to be inevitable on the threshold of profound changes in the surrounding world and at the same time of changes awaiting museums of modern and contemporary art.

The upcoming CIMAM webinar will go a step further by taking a look at four different and radical approaches to the idea and practice of possible museums’ collections. The curators of the four diverse initiatives will share their experience: on virtual museum hosting international collections of Roma art (Timea Junghaus, Executive Director of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) will speak on behalf of RomaMoMA), on mobility and establishing a relationship with local communities (Sofia Dourron from Museo La Ene in Buenos Aires), on co-owning the collection of artists’ novels developed by M HKA (Joanna Zielinska and David Maroto from The Book Lovers collective) and on managing artistic heritage and collections in times of war by Piotr Rypson, Adjunct Professor at New Media Department, Polish-Japanese Academy of Computer Technology; Curator at the Jewish Historical Institute and Chair of ICOM Poland.

Panelists:

  • Sofia Dourron, Independent Curator and former director of Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
  • Timea Junghaus, Executive Director of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), on behalf of RomaMoMA.
  • The Book Lovers Collective (Joanna Zielinska & David Maroto) based in Antpern, Beligum.
  • Piotr Rypson, Adjunct Professor at New Media Department, Polish-Japanese Academy of Computer Technology. Curator at the Jewish Historical Institute, and Chair of ICOM Poland.

Moderated by CIMAM Board Members:

  • Agustín Pérez Rubio, Independent Curator, Madrid, Spain
  • Malgorzata Ludwisiak, Chief Curator, Department of Modern Art, National Museum in Gdansk, Poland.

About CIMAM’s Rapid Response Webinars

Started in 2020, CIMAM has taken the new virtual scenario as an opportunity to launch a series of online activities exclusively for our community to, now more than ever, reinforce the sense of connectivity through online meetings in a peer to peer environment to share, learn, and be inspired by the experiences of other CIMAM professionals.

For 2022, we have prepared a series of online sessions that will take place, nearly every month of the year. The next ones are:

  • Thursday 26 May: Museums and Well-being
  • Thursday 30 June: Three views of digital transformation. Webinar proposed and designed by CIMAM member José-Carlos Mariategui.
  • Thursday 5 July: Commemorative webinar for the 60th anniversary of CIMAM's birth.

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