New Encounters international conference

 

New Encounters is an upcoming international conference at the National Museum of Australia. It explores how Indigenous communities and museums around the world are re-thinking their relationships with colonial collections – questioning and confronting the legacies of colonialism in creative and unexpected ways.

 

The conference brings together First Nations representatives, museum practitioners and academics from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Finland, Greenland and Taiwan to discuss a range of critical issues. These include: how museums and communities are re-engaging with Indigenous colonial collections; the rights and responsibilities involved in the custodianship of these collections; repatriation of cultural heritage; and what future models of engagement might look like – locally, regionally and globally.

 

The New Encounters conference will be an opportunity to discuss the relationship between museums and Indigenous communities. It will focus on the diverse ways in which artists and source communities are re-connecting with cultural collections and re-imagining their ongoing relationships with the museums that hold these collections. Key questions that the conference will pose are:

 

 

The conference will be structured around the ongoing connections between collections and place, and museums and communities – past, present and future.

 

Join us to discuss different ideas about the relationship between museums, historical collections and Indigenous communities.

 

Conference partners include the Australian National University and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

 

Further information, including speaker details and the programme, visit: www.nma.gov.au