Legacies: Why Museum Histories Matter conference will be held 13–15 January 2026, Leiden University, the Netherlands
A conference that explores the meaning of inheritance
The 21st century is a particularly engaging moment to study the history of museums. How do their storied origins – as private palace collections and Wunderkammern, houses of worship, monuments to the nation, sites of commemoration or new archistar containers for art – relate to their significance in contemporary life? How do their physical structures, be it cabinets, palaces, white cubes, temples, churches or mausolea, and their collections reflect the museums’ histories, wherever they may be in the contemporary world? How do we navigate the idea of the museum as an inherited construct, within the context of its many debates? What is it about a museum’s past that keeps us curious, and how does it inform what it does in the present?
This international conference, a project of the Leiden University Museum Lab, invites papers that focus on museums with significant founding histories, broadly defined by their buildings, collections, commemorative functions, collectors or founders, that are currently engaged in some manner of institutional introspection, by way of exhibitions, acquisitions, restitutions, or renovations.
The following keynote speakers have been confirmed: Dr. Andrew McClellan (Tufts University, Boston), Dr. Carole Paul (University of California, San Diego), Dr. Emile Schrijver (Jewish Cultural Quarter and National Holocaust Museum, Amsterdam), and Monsignor Dr. Timothy Verdon (Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence).
This in-person conference is organized by Dr. Laurie Kalb Cosmo, Dr. Marika Keblusek, and Dr. Susanne Boersma, Leiden University Centre for Arts in Society.
Call for papers: Passed