On April 9-10, 2019, in Minsk, at the National Library of Belarus (116 Nezavisimosti Ave.), the International scientific and practical conference “Museums in the 21st century: NEW MEANINGS, NEW SPACE, NEW IMAGES” was held. ICOM Belarus acted as a co-organizer of the conference.
The conference was held by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus in cooperation with the Yanka Kupala State Literary Museum, the National Historical Museum of the Republic of Belarus, the National Library of Belarus, the Cultural Heritage and Modernity Foundation (Belarus), the Belarusian Committee of the International Council of Museums “ICOM”, the Republican Board of Directors of Museums under financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus, the State Literary Museum of Yanka Kupala and JTI in Belarus.
The conference was attended by museum specialists, as well as researchers in the field of museology and cultural heritage from Belarus, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Poland, and the USA.
The conference is aimed at solving practical issues of improving, developing and effectively implementing the management of museums and museum collections in the context of rapid social transformations and transformations, as well as searching for new types of communication and dialogue that museums should generate in the 21st century.
Photo – Viktor Ivanchikov.
The main topics of the conference:
- The activities of museums in the context of global problems of our time.
- Interaction of museums with local communities.
- Improving the standards of professional museum activity.
- Integration of museums into the digital economy.
- Collaboration, partnership, advocacy in the modern museum space.
The working languages of the conference are Belarusian, Russian and English.
KEY SPEAKERS
Hans-Martin Hinz – Doctor of Geography, President of ICOM (2010-2016), honorary member of many European cultural and academic institutions. President of ICOM Germany (1999–2004), ICOM European Regional Alliance (2002–2005). Author of more than 200 scientific publications in the field of museology, history and geography. He is currently Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Sudentendeutsches Museum in Munich (since 2007), as well as a member of the Board of Directors and Board of Trustees of the Curt-Engelhorn-Stiftung (Mannheim), the Foundation for Comparative European History (Bamberg) and the Geography Society in Berlin. He also chairs several exhibition advisory boards. He was awarded the Federal Order of Merit (2014), the highest award of the Federal Republic of Germany for exceptional social work.
Mikhail Gnedovsky – Candidate of Historical Sciences, Leading Analyst of the Moscow Agency for Recreation and Tourism Organization (Mosgortur); lecturer at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences; member of the ICOM Standing Committee on Ethics; Member of the Presidium of the Russian National Committee of ICOM. In 2003–2015 Mikhail Gnedovsky was director of the Institute for Cultural Policy. He has also been Chairman of the European Museum Forum (EMF, 2009–2011), jury member of the European Museum of the Year (EMYA, 2002–2012) and jury member of the European Competition for Young Cultural Policy Researchers (CPRA, 2010–2014). Mikhail Gnedovsky is the author and consultant of sociocultural research and projects, lecturer and trainer in educational programs for cultural managers in Russia and abroad, author of more than 250 publications on cultural issues, translator, laureate of the Order of the Golden Cross of Merit (Republic of Poland).
Sergei Ushakin – Russian-American cultural historian and anthropologist. PhD in Political Science, PhD in Anthropology, Full Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University (USA). Since 2006 he has been working at Princeton University in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, since 2011 he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Since 2012, he has been Director of the Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Program at Princeton University. He is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, including the monograph “Patriotism of Despair”, which received the “Best Book of the Year in Literature and Culture” award (2012) from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages.
Conference photo gallery (photo – Viktor Ivanchikov):
