ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) will present, in co-operation with re:publica, the second Martin Roth Symposium as a digital Theme Week from 7 to 11 September 2020, kindly supported by Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and funded by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office.

Museums offer public spaces for encounters between people and ideas. If cultural products belong to the whole of humankind and if participation and inclusion are the means of lively communities, how might the museums of the future be built as spaces of polyphonic and critical dialogues under globalised conditions? How can these dialogues refer to our pasts and futures? How might they serve cultural democracy for all, while challenged by increasing anti-liberal tensions worldwide. And is it even possible to see the museum in a radically democratic light, as many artists and curators are demanding today?

This year’s five-day symposium asks critical questions about the museum’s future. It intends to identify innovative strategies which, from a global perspective, are needed to establish a space of democracy through architecture, analogue and virtual formats, local and international exchange, and alternative international (art) histories. Over five days, top international experts from these sectors will unpack and bring to light challenges and visions in the fields of museum and culture.

The symposium honours and commemorates the legacy of one of Germany’s most innovative museum directors and cultural policy makers: Martin Roth. Following its first issue in 2018, What can culture do?, the Martin Roth Symposium aims to biennially bring together thought leaders from the cultural, academic, artistic and political sectors to share ideas and future scenarios close to Roth’s own innovative convictions.

Speakers:

Alain Bieber, Cultural manager, curator, artistic director of the cultural institution NRW-Forum Düsseldorf ; Gus Casely-Hayford, Director of V&A East ; David Chipperfield, Architect ; Bice Curiger, Artistic director of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh ; Lucy Darwin, Producer; Inés de Castro, Director of the Linden-Museum Stuttgart – Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde (State Museum of Ethnology) ; Clémentine Deliss, Associate Curator of KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Co-Director of LagosPhoto20, Guest Professor of Theory and History at HFBK Hamburg and Mentor of the Berlin Program for Artists ; Hartmut Dorgerloh, General Director of the Humboldt Forum ; Elvira Espejo Ayca, Poet, Essayist, Musician, Weaver Artist, and former Director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore (MUSEF), La Paz ; Julia Grosse, Editor-in-Chief of ‘Contemporary And’ and ‘Contemporary And América Latina‘ ; Edwin Heathcote, Architecture and design critic of the ‘Financial Times’ ; Louisa Hutton, Architect and Co-founder of Sauerbruch Hutton ; Małgorzata Ludwisiak, Independent art critic and curator ; Andrew McClellan, Professor of Art History at Tufts University ; Michael Moriarty, Coach, Apex Discovery Coaching & Development ; Yvette Mutumba, Editor-in-Chief of ‘Contemporary And’ and ‘Contemporary And América Latina’ ; Pi Li, Sigg Senior Curator of M+, ein Museum für visuelle Kultur in Hong Kong ; Robin Reardon, Portfolio Executive Producer, Walt Disney Imagineering ; Manouchehr Shamsrizi, Co-founder of ‘gamelab.berlin’ at the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin ; Kavita Singh, Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi ; Philip Tinari, Director and Chief Executive of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

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