Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum x Museum 2050 fourth annual symposium

Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum is pleased to partner with Museum 2050 to conceptualize and organize the fourth annual Museum 2050 symposium in Beijing from December 11–12, 2021. The theme of this year’s symposium is The Agency of Museums: In Redefining the Past, Present and Future. In this symposium, we seek to underscore institutional practices and imaginaries that break out of the paradigms established by museums globally. Such archetypes tend to consolidate a static sense of art history rather than generating new horizons for critically rethinking historical canons and actively participating in the rendering of contemporary art in the present. The conference will explore the complex relationship between art institutions and the formation of art history, and lessons we can take from the past into a new era. We hope that these examples of institution building, historization and persistence from China and around the world can serve as a roadmap for navigating the subjectivity and radicality of contemporary art museums in a changing world that increasingly questions the utility of museums. We were overwhelmed by the response to this year’s Call for Papers with such an enthusiastic response from many practitioners and researchers. We are grateful to all applicants for the high quality proposals they submitted.

Museum 2050’s annual symposium is made up of three components: invited keynote speeches, paper presentations selected from the Call for Papers and workshops. This year’s keynote speakers are two museum directors with a profound knowledge of art history and long-standing experience of museum leadership. They are Professor Wang Huangsheng, Chief Director of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum and Director of the New Art Museum Studies Research Center, and Patrick Flores, Professor of Art Studies at University of the Philippines, who is also the long-time Director of the Vargas Museum. They have made art historical research an essential approach to art museum practice, and have also been long-time proponents of disciplinary development in the field of art museum studies.

From nearly 100 submissions received, we have selected 12 outstanding proposals and invited their writers to present their research and reflections on art museums at this year’s conference. The presentations will be divided into three segments, and each session will be followed by a roundtable discussion allowing for questions from the audience and engagement amongst speakers. For the closed-door workshops, we have invited He Xiaote, Director of the Exhibition Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Wang Jing, Editor-in-Chief of Art Museum Magazine, and Leigh Tanner, Co-Founder of Museum 2050, to convene this year’s program.

The conference will be held both onsite and online. Zoom ID: 867 4774 9416 Password: 888888