(New York, April 3, 2014)—Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today the 14 participants in the inaugural session of the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium, to be held at the Museum April 7–18, 2014. The Metropolitan Museum created and will host the colloquium to broaden international dialogue about museum management and collections care among directors from collecting institutions.
“Since its inception, the Met has been a museum that has embraced an international perspective and sought to open its visitors’ eyes to the world,” said Mr. Campbell. “And like any great museum, the Met is a place where people come together to understand different points of view. It is with this in mind that we welcome this distinguished group of museum leaders from 14 countries on five continents for the launch of our global museum leadership program. Ideally, this exchange of ideas and expertise will generate collaborative thinking that will prove beneficial not only to the participating institutions but to museums on a much broader scale.”
Many of the participants in this year’s Global Museum Leaders Colloquium are the directors of the largest or second-largest museums in their respective countries, and in some cases, they oversee national networks of museums. They are directors of national, state, municipal, university, and private museums, with collections ranging from encyclopedic to regionally specific, and from archaeological to modern and contemporary. Ten of the institutions they represent are either undergoing major renovation and expansion projects now or have completed comprehensive renovations within the past four years.
The participants, listed by country, are:
* Afghanistan: Mohammed Fahim Rahimi, Chief Curator, National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul
* Argentina: Victoria Noorthoorn, Director, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Buenos Aires
* Brazil: Renata Vieira da Motta, Director, State Secretariat for Culture, São Paulo
* China: Liang Gong, Director, Nanjing Museum, Nanjing
* Georgia: David Lordkipanidze, Director General, Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi
* India: Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Director, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS, former Prince of Wales Museum), Mumbai
* Japan: Eriko Osaka, Director, Yokohama Museum, Yokohama
* Mexico: Agustín Arteaga, Director, Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), Mexico City
* Netherlands: Stijn Huijts, Director, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht
* Peru: Andrés Alvarez-Calderón, Director, Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera (Larco Museum), Lima
* Poland: Agnieszka Morawińska, Director, National Museum of Poland, Warsaw
* Singapore: Eugene Tan, Director, National Art Gallery, Singapore
* South Africa: Steven Sack, Director, Origins Center (at the University of Witwatersrand), Johannesburg
* Thailand: Amara Srisuchat, Acting Director, Office of National Museums, Ministry of Culture, Bangkok
“The Global Museum Leaders Colloquium was convened because there are far too few opportunities for museum directors of diverse international backgrounds to exchange viewpoints in a sustained and meaningful way about the myriad challenges that confront museums worldwide,” said András Szántó, a museum analyst and writer on arts institutions who has advised the Metropolitan Museum on the development of the colloquium and will serve as its moderator. “We hope this is the beginning of a conversation that will extend to many more international museums in the years to come."
The GMLC aims to provide a 360-degree view of current museum practices worldwide. A significant portion of the schedule is reserved for open dialogue among the invited directors, who will present case studies on their institutions and meet in a series of small group workshops to address timely issues confronting museums around the world and propose new models for collaboration. The GMLC participants will work with more than 50 Metropolitan Museum experts across all departments throughout the two-week colloquium and make group site visits to cultural institutions in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
The Global Museum Leaders Colloquium has been made possible in part by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Please note:
This program is not open to the public. Press interested in covering a session of the GMLC should contact the Metropolitan Museum’s Communications Department at communications@metmuseum.org or 212-570-3951. Access will be limited.
The Met Around the World
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s largest and finest museums, with collections spanning more than 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. The Museum’s main building, located at the edge of Central Park along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and The Cloisters museum and gardens, its branch museum for medieval art and architecture in northern Manhattan, received 6.2 million visitors last year.
The Museum’s far-ranging international activities include loans of individual works of art and exhibitions, which travel to and from institutions around the world. Last year, 865 works of art from the Met’s collections were on loan abroad, and the exhibition Earth, Sea, and Sky: Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art traveled to Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and the National Museum of China, Beijing. In fall 2014, The American West in Bronze: 1850-1925 will be shown at the Nanjing Museum in China. Each year, the Met also takes part in hundreds of international conservation projects, excavations, fellowships, and other exchanges of scholars, researchers, and staff.
Extensive information about the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibitions, collections, programs, and other activities is available on its website at www.metmuseum.org. Details about the Museum’s international activities can be found on the Met Around the World page of the website at www.metmuseum.org/met-around-the-world.
# # #
April 3, 2014
Press resources