Events Centers: MUSEUMS (CM)

The theme for International Museum Day 2023 is ‘Museums, Sustainability and Wellbeing,’ making this topic very relevant. Museums are key contributors to the well-being and to the sustainable development of communities, and can play a key role in bringing about positive change. They can be drivers of creating inclusive and healthy work environments where importance is given to developing skill-sets of their staff, while also prioritising their mental health and wellbeing.

This online talk is brought to you by HopOn India/Museums22 and the Centre for Museums, an initiative of Cultre and INDICA

The pandemic world accelerated digitalization, reviving museums and cultural institutions. Museums and institutions have used a variety of strategies to adapt and migrate into the digital world, including using previously digitised resources, improving social media presence, software, and curating new online exhibitions as an educational tool for the audience. In this webinar, we are going to talk about the role of digital exhibitions in museums. Bhanu Ghalot will also take us through the new immersive exhibition “Un.Divided Identities: Lesser-known stories of the Partition” and address the role of cultural exchange, oral histories, and curation through a critical lens in contemporary times.

To know more about the Museum’s momentum in digital exhibitions and curatorial experiments, do register for the talk.

Crafting Subjects in Museum Education

A discussion on changing landscape of education and programmes in the museum sector

Museums play a crucial role in building an educational environment. As they ride the currents of change, they still retain their power of legitimacy as repositories of culture. Being a centre of education and influence, museums around the world have provided more than 18 million hours of targeted education annually, including guided tours, staff visits, school outreach, and professional development for teachers. Museum education, as a practice, is always developing according to trends and tools. In addition to responding to ongoing shifts in audience expectations and pedagogical approaches, the sector has recently had to confront pandemic-related disruptions, which have pushed virtual formats to the forefront, and reassess its programmes. Museum educators and professionals have crafted subjects and curated different initiatives for various types of museums in the country showcasing exhibits virtually as well as physically (outdoor and site visit) educating our history and culture. The talk will focus on museum education and its changing landscape. It will also highlight the trends and career in the museum sector in our upcoming webinar.

To know more about Crafting trending subjects and education in Museum sector, do register for the talk

Cultural institutions play an important role in connecting and building a community through participation, access, cultural consumption, and inclusion. Institutions are rethinking and redesigning their environments to bring together audiences from various backgrounds. The upcoming webinar addresses the possibilities and challenges of cultural engagement in spaces like museums, galleries, exhibitions and educational institutions.

Ketaki Varma will be discussing how it is crucial to make a cultural space multi-disciplinary for audience development.  She will also talk about the role of digital engagement and collective experiences of cultural and art organisations as a catalyst, and its need to adapt new forms of engagement to generate new opportunities in changing times.

Sensitivity, Visibility, Inclusivity

A conversation on making museums accessible with Siddhant Shah, founder of Access for ALL

For the 2022 iteration, International Museum Day took the theme “The Power of Museums” to explore the potential of museums in bringing about a positive change in communities through three lenses. One of these was the power of innovating on digitalization and accessibility. Museums around the world are thinking through and implementing strategies to make themselves more inclusive and accessible spaces.

Siddhant Shah has dedicated himself to bridging the gap between disability and cultural heritage through his work related to physical, intellectual and social accessibility.

The talk will focus on how Indian museums can be made more accessible to individuals with sensory impairments or learning disabilities. Shah will shed light on the recent efforts made in thinking about inclusivity and accessibility in terms of both physical access and digital access. The talk will also discuss the factors which hinder accessibility in museums and how equitable experiences, both for the regular and physically disabled, can be offered by integrating inclusivity components into museum displays.

Center for Museums a joint initiative of CULTRE and INDICA is pleased to announce a talk “Animating the Inanimate” by Prof. A Damodaran.

The talk focuses on the interconnection of the museums, arts and society. It deliberates on the issues of the management system of museums through various case studies based on the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Guggenheim and The Victoria Memorial. Furthermore, it talks about pandemic-induced changes in the concepts of arts. It touches upon virtual space technologies and blockchains in the domain of museums and art. Particularly, how is it challenging the Bi spatial art organisations and changing the strategic directions of large art organisations?