Event Information
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Date(s):
Thursday, July 29, 2021
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Time:
11:00 am to 12:00 pm Eastern Time
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Location:
The American Alliance of Museums in partnership with ICOM-US invite you to participate in a series of global conversations that will reassess the purpose, identity and definition of museums as civic spaces, public assets, prisms of identity, and repositories of tangible and intangible cultural heritage during an era of radical change. These conversations will ultimately inform the content of the November/December 2021 issue of Museum magazine on the theme of museum disruption.
As museum professionals, we like to think of our museums as sacred spaces—places where cherished ideas and objects are housed. What do those outside of our field think about museums? Are our institutions truly places where individuals, groups and communities gather to deliberate, exchange ideas, and solve problems to advance the general wellbeing of their communities? Can museums contribute to the common good when they are hardly accessible to the public community? Museums are not serving this public need to the best of their ability. What more could be done to challenge our institutions to reconsider all spaces to engage our communities on their own terms, and not just those of museum professionals.
Speaker: Dr. Carla Hayden, chief librarian, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Dr. Carla Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress, the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library. Prior to her latest post she served as CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. Previous positions include: deputy commissioner and chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library, assistant professor for Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh and library services coordinator for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Hayden was president of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004 and has served on the National Museum and Library Services Board. In 1995, she was the first African American to receive Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award in recognition of her outreach services at the Pratt Library, which included an after-school center for Baltimore teens offering homework assistance and college and career counseling.
Conversants: Melanie Adams, Director, Anacostia Museum, Washington, DC; Jose Ortiz, Deputy Director, MoMAPS1, Long Island City, NY; Cristina Toma, General Manager, National Museum of Maps and Old Books, Romania; Lana Karaia, Chief Staff of Development, Georgian National Museum,Tbilisi, Georgia
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The statements and opinions expressed by panelists, hosts, attendees, or other participants of this event are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of, nor are endorsed by, the American Alliance of Museums.