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!