[Conference] UMAC 2012 Singapore

The XII Annual Meeting of the International Committee for University Museums and Collections (UMAC) 2012 will be held in Singapore on the 10 to 12 October 2012 at the National University of Singapore. Details on the list of speakers, papers (totalling 50), and conference sessions are also available on the conference website. All sessions have been grouped according to specific sub-themes drawn from the main conference theme:

“Encountering Limits: The University Museum”

10 October 2012 [Sessions 1 & 2] University Museums: Setting the Scene

Papers selected for sessions 1 & 2 will address salient aspects of the university museum that condition its status and its practice. These include its mandated role in teaching and learning, its use of collections, its work in promoting curatorial experimentations, its attempts in defining audiences, and its contexts in relation to the University and place among communities of museums. Significant within these discussions are the evolving perspectives regarding the role of a museum, contingent on shifting landscapes of the university and museological practice.

11 October 2012 [Sessions 3 – 6 presented as parallel sessions] Practices and their contexts

Focusing on case studies and country surveys, and conducted as parallel sessions, papers selected for sessions 3 to 6 illustrate and examine common and divergent initiatives in the areas of curating, exhibition-based learning, developing campus audience and outreach programmes, engaging source communities, conservation and collections programmes, and museum infrastructure and its possibilities and challenges.

12 October 2012 [Sessions 7 & 8] University Museums: Evolving Positions Papers selected for sessions 7 & 8 will focus on the evolving perspectives into museum practice, by way of reexamining the roles of a university museum, and re-addressing its educational and curatorial focuses.