Collecting with(in) the City
CAMOC – COMCOL conference 2024
From 9 to 11 October 2024 the CAMOC and COMCOL (ICOM International Committee for Collecting) will join forces again to revisit collecting and (re)presenting in and with the city, by investigating the fluidity of the borders between museums and cities. The conference Collecting with(in) the City will be hosted by the Amsterdam Museum in partnership with Imagine IC and will focus on what collecting with and in a city means and how the museums and cultural heritage institutions of today do this.
Ticket sale ends October 8, 12.00pm CEST. The conference can also be attended online.
Rondleiding, datum onbekend, fotograaf: Francoise Bolechowski.
Collecting the City #4, 2024, Francoise Bolechowski
What can museums capture beyond objects?
(How) can they collect city rhythms, sounds, or smells? Can you collect the people that create and use a city? How can contemporary collecting be inspired by existing collections, and how can looking at collections with new (outside) perspectives bring new insights? What remnants of the past live in the present and how do they manifest? How should museums care for new urban narratives and for the people they concern? When working on a new balance of expertise and expectations, what inequalities and power relations emerge in (city) museums? How do shifting ideas about ownership and authority affect collecting and exhibiting practices?
For museums, these questions are becoming ever more relevant, as the balance between tangible and intangible heritage is shifting.
Foto Amsterdam Museum, Eva Bloem
Collecting stories and experiences
Museums and heritage institutions are collecting not only objects but also stories and experiences. And increasingly they do so in various participatory forms with inhabitants, who can become partners in co-creation processes and projects. Thus, as collecting cities may include contemporary urban spaces, as well as urban lives and urban narratives, these questions also touch on critical discourses on power, reciprocity, and impact. Who can/do you partner with? What does this process of collaborating with networks and communities in a city look like? What makes collaborations mutually beneficial? In other words, collaborative and participatory collecting raises various issues worth studying, from ethics and legalities to sociological and psychological questions, as well as, of course, from a museology perspective.
The conference is a space for heritage practitioners from all over the world to reflect on collecting in and within a city. We welcome anyone from any professional field who is interested in these matters to join the conference.
'Panorama Amsterdam. Een levende geschiedenis van de stad'
Conference programme - Day 1 October 9
Excursions at Imagine IC & the Amsterdam Museum
- 09.30 AM – 1 PM | Breakfast at Imagine IC & excursion through Amsterdam Zuidoost visiting The Black Archives, OSCAM and CBK Zuidoost. Please sign up here, limited spots available.
- 1 – 3 PM | Lunch, travel & exploring the city
- 3 – 4.15 PM | Tours at the Amsterdam Museum, through the exhibitions:
- Manahahtáanung or New Amsterdam?: The Indigenous Story Behind New York
- Collecting the City #4: Museum om de Hoek, Unknown Zeedijk and Kazerne Reigersbos
- Panorama Amsterdam: A Living History of the City
- Faces of North Holland: Untold Stories from Aalsmeer to Texel
- Mini-expo Unboxing: Fashion from the Archives. Please make sure to participate in this guided tour if you wish to participate in the workshop “It Starts With Feeling: To touch and/or being touched by museum objects” on the 10th of October, 13:00 – 14:15 pm.
- The Beach
- 4.30 – 6.30 PM | Welcome reception at Amsterdam Museum
- 6.30 PM | End of day 1
Conference programme - Day 2 October 10
Conference day at Pakhuis de Zwijger
- 8.30 – 9 AM | Walk-in with coffee and tea
- 9 – 9.45 AM | Conference opening
- 9.45 – 10.15 AM | Keynote Zandra Yeaman, Head of Strategy, Development and Implementation, Hunterian, Glasgow
- 10.15 – 10.45 AM | Poster presentations, coffee & tea
- 10.45 AM – 12 PM | Round 1 Parallel sessions
- 1.1 Dialogue session: Collecting Activism
- 1.2 Interactive session: Digital City Experiences
- 1.3 Paper presentations: Powerful communities? Practices of co-curating #1
- 12 – 1 PM | Lunch & poster presentations
- 1 PM – 2.15 PM | Round 2 Parallel sessions
- 2.1 Dialogue session: Indigenous Practices
- 2.2 Workshop: It Starts With Feeling: To touch and/or being touched by museum objects
- 2.3 Paper presentations: Powerful communities? Practices of co-curating #2
- 2.4 Paper presentations: Sharing the power of interpretation
- 2.15 – 2.45 PM | Poster presentations, coffee & tea
- 2.45 PM – 4 PM | Round 3 Parallel sessions
- 3.1 Paper presentations: Oral Histories Revisited
- 3.2 Interactive session: Senses of Home
- 3.3 Paper presentations: Folk perspectives
- 4.15 – 4.30 PM | Artistic intervention by Sites of Memory
- 4.30 – 5.45 PM | Closing panel with the Amsterdam Museum & Imagine IC
- 6 PM | End of day 2
All the locations can be found in the full programme, subject to change.
Conference programme - Day 3 October 11
Conference day at Pakhuis de Zwijger
- 9 – 9.30 AM | Walk-in with coffee & tea
- 9.30 – 10 AM | Keynote: Re-calibrating the city museum and our professionalism by Léontine Meijer-van Mensch, director of Museum Rotterdam
- 10 – 10.30 AM | Poster presentations, coffee & tea
- 10.30 – 11.45 AM | Round 4 parallel sessions
- 4.1 Paper presentations: City identities – plural narratives
- 4.2 Paper presentations: Care: ethical challenges of collecting and collections
- 4.3 Paper presentations: Decolonial Practices
- 4.4 Paper presentations: Tangible Meets Intangible
- 12 – 12.45 PM | Lunch & poster presentations
- 1 – 2 PM | CAMOC & COMCOL meeting (separate)
- 2 – 3 PM | Round 5 Parallel sessions
- 5.1 Paper presentations: City Identities & Conflict
- 5.2 Paper presentations: The City through the Eyes of Artists
- 3 – 4 PM | Closing Session: Collecting with(in) the Conference, artistic intervention by Jeroen van der Most
- 4 – 5 PM | Goodbye drinks
- 5 PM | End of day 3
All the locations can be found in the full programme, subject to change.
Lets Talk Listening jubileum seminar, foto: Paco Nunez
Programme at Imagine IC
10.00 AM - 4.30 AM
You can join the work shop 'Unravelling Urban Tapestries: Deepening An Understanding Of Our Cities' on October 12th at Imagine IC. This interactive workshop welcomes museum professionals from around the world to discover new perspectives on urban ecologies. After this hands-on workshop, you'll leave with new gained insights for and a curiosity to build more understanding among the many people that make the cities.
Download the full programme here. There is a maximum number of participants, so make sure to register to secure a spot.
Overzicht Collecting the City #4 : Ongekend Zeedijk
About the Hosts and the Host City
Amsterdam Museum has been collecting the city in various ways since the founding of the museum in 1926, but in the last decades the focus has shifted more and more to the contemporary city. In 2020 they began the program ‘Collecting the City’, based on co-creation with communities. Imagine IC, a heritage organization based in Amsterdam Southeast, has been active almost 25 years in documenting current social relations through participatory heritage work. The collaboration between the two hosts is a great opportunity to share and explore how city museums and heritage institutions from all over the world deal with (contemporary) collecting and rethinking collecting practices.
Contact and Further Questions
If you seek financial support for physical attendance, the following options are available. Some ICOM’s national committees give out travel grants to attend conferences. To find out more, reach out to your national committee. There are also (limited) grants available for CAMOC and COMCOL members.
Available grants:
- Young ICOM Members Grant CAMOC 2024 – application
- Young COMCOL travel grant 2024 – application
- COMCOL travel grant 2024 - application
For questions regarding tickets, registration, or your stay in Amsterdam please email camoccomcol2024@amsterdammuseum.nl
For any questions for CAMOC, please send an email to secretary.camoc@icom.museum
For any questions for COMCOL, please send an email to secretary.comcol@icom.museum
Scientific committee on behalf of CAMOC and COMCOL: Leen Beyers, Andrea Delaplace, Danielle Kuijten, Flora Nguye Mutere, Annemarie de Wildt, Glenn Perkins, Sandra Vacca
Accommodation
Here you can download a pdf-file with a list of possible accommodations.