Conference: Collecting with(in) the City

What can museums capture beyond objects?

(How) can they collect city rhythms, sounds, or smells? Can you collect the people that create and use a city? How can contemporary collecting be inspired by existing collections, and how can looking at collections with new (outside) perspectives bring new insights? What remnants of the past live in the present and how do they manifest? How should museums care for new urban narratives and for the people they concern? When working on a new balance of expertise and expectations, what inequalities and power relations emerge in (city) museums? How do shifting ideas about ownership and authority affect collecting and exhibiting practices?

For museums, these questions are becoming ever more relevant, as the balance between tangible and intangible heritage is shifting.

Collecting stories and experiences

Museums and heritage institutions are collecting not only objects but also stories and experiences. And increasingly they do so in various participatory forms with inhabitants, who can become partners in co-creation processes and projects. Thus, as collecting cities may include contemporary urban spaces, as well as urban lives and urban narratives, these questions also touch on critical discourses on power, reciprocity, and impact. Collaborative and participatory collecting raises various issues worth studying, from ethics and legalities to sociological and psychological questions, as well as, of course, from a museology perspective.

The conference is a space for heritage practitioners from all over the world to reflect on collecting in and within a city. We welcome anyone from any professional field who is interested in these matters to join the conference.

More information about the conference, tickets and the program can be found here.