Save the date —> UMAC 2018, 21-24 June

Next year, UMAC‘s annual conference will be held in partnership with the AAMG, Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (USA). We are delighted to organise the conference with them, and also to be coming back to the USA after 15 years.

The date will be 21-24 June 2018, at the University of Miami.

We encourage members of either organization to join us and explore this year’s theme:

Audacious Ideas: University Museums and Collections as Change-Agents for a Better World

We live in a dangerous, often unstable, and environmentally compromised world. What can academic museums, galleries, and collections do to remedy this situation? If we are dedicated to teaching and training new generations of students, to serving increasingly diverse communities, how do we make a positive difference? How do we know we are making that difference? Let’s share great ideas and pressing concerns and learn and network with our global colleagues.

We’ll be posting our Call for Proposals in September. We’re looking for presenters to share with us exciting and unusual ways that their museums, galleries, and collections are serving as change-agents. We’re interested in proposals that address how you are adopting new roles and adapting old ones, welcoming new constituencies while keeping current visitors, and creating new paradigms that make our institutions more valued and critical partners in higher education and in building a more peaceful and healthy world.

We will invite proposals that address:

  • New models of teaching across campus, including exhibitions and collections
  • New strategies for equity and inclusion on and off campus
  • Innovative translational collaborations
  • New ideas for advancing our mission as change-agents in society – locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally

Stay tuned for more information soon!

UNIVERSEUM has a new President!

 

 

UMAC is delighted that UMAC member Sébastien Soubiran, from the Jardin des Sciences/University of Strasbourg (France), was elected President of UNIVERSEUM, the European University Heritage Network, on 10 June 2017.

UMAC wishes Sébastien the best promoting European university heritage in Europe and beyond. We are looking forward to even more collaborations with him and the newly-elected UNIVERSEUM Board.

We also profit to thank Sofia Talas, the former UNIVERSEUM President – also a UMAC member – her precious contribution to university museums and collections and to UMAC. The organisation of the last UMAC Annual Conference in Milan would have not been possible without her.

UMAC wishes both the best of successes!!!

 

Serbian University Museums and Collections

How much do you know about university museums and collections in Serbia? Probably not much, right?

A survey published this year for the Universeum annual conference in Belgrade will change that.

 

Živan Lazović, Darko Mitrović, and Ivana Mitrović (eds). Serbian University Heritage: University of Belgrade, 2017.

 

Congratulations to the editors!

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New publication on Best Practices for Academic Museums

The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG), USA, has just released an important publication on  Best Practices. It  covers all major areas of university museum practice – from collections to fundraising and from governance to ethics – reuniting into a single source what is generally fragmented and dispersed. It has eight chapters and 10 appendices, multiple examples, links and legal references.

The ‘AAMG Professional Practices for Academic Museums and Galleries‘ is undoubtedly of broader interest to university museums and collections all over the world, making it an important resource for colleagues outside the USA.

Congratulations to the AAMG!

Access the full publication here.