The Stedelijk Museum – in collaboration with ASCA/ACGS at the University of Amsterdam, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Folkwang Museum Essen, and the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam – is proud to present the three-day conference Collecting Geographies, as part of the museum's Global Collaborations program. The conference consists of a number of public keynote lectures and panel discussions, as well as more than 80 lectures divided over 24 themed sessions during the three days of the conference. These papers were selected from an open call, to which an overwhelming number of curators, artists, theoreticians, sociologists, and scholars responded.

Admittance to all keynote lectures and panel discussions by reservation only, via globalconference@stedelijk.nl mentioning your name and the event concerned.
Entrance fee for all keynote lectures and panel discussions: entrance ticket to the museum + € 2.50, per event.
Public attendance to the academic sessions is limited; please inquire through globalconference@stedelijk.nl
Admittance fee to entire conference (all keynotes, panels, academic sessions, lunches etc.): € 100,-

Against the backdrop of globalization today, museums for modern and contemporary art in the Western Hemisphere are increasingly engaging in the acquisition and presentation of art from all over the world, beyond the still-prevalent dominance of European and North American art. Given the extreme concentration of internationally operating art institutions in Western Europe and the United States on the one hand, and the often radically different self-understanding of non-Western art institutions on the other, the institutional claims to the global need to be reviewed, contextualized, and contested.

A critical reassessment of the history of Western art museums provides a starting point for this discussion. When taking a closer look at the institutional histories of such museums, it often appears that they are more diverse and can offer interesting correspondences with today's curatorial practices and broadening international scope. At the same time, the conference will deal with questions such as: How to go beyond cultural essentialism? How can museums reconcile a globalizing perspective with local cultural diversities? Can we replace modernist categorization methods, for example the most obvious one that has split the "ethnographic" from the "modern"? What can we learn from artist practices? And what are – and have been – the policies for "global" programming and acquisitions developed by modern and contemporary art museums?

The three-day conference Collecting Geographies: Global Programming and Museums of Modern Art takes a closer look at the new inquiries into the relationships between art institutions, globalization, and postcolonial discourse, including a critical assessment of the deployed terminology and the strategies that focus on local affinities within a larger art-historical and global framework.

Read more :  http://stedelijk.nl/en/calendar/symposia/call