Enfilade

From ArtHist.net and the conference website (which includes abstracts) . . .

Legacies: Why Museum Histories Matter

Leiden, 13–15 January 2026

Organized by Laurie Kalb Cosmo, Marika Keblusek, Susanne Boersma, Raphaël Gerssen, and Margot Stoppels

In January 2026, Leiden University’s Museum Lab will host the international conference Legacies: Why Museum Histories Matter. The conference reflects on museums with significant founding histories, broadly defined by their buildings, collections, commemorative functions, collectors or founders, that are currently engaged in some manner of institutional introspection, by way of exhibitions, acquisitions, restitutions, or renovations. International researchers and museum professionals from a range of institutions present their research and museum practices tied to museum legacies.

The three-day programme consists of twelve panels and four keynote speeches by Dr. Carole Paul (University of California, Santa Barbara), Monsignor Dr. Timothy Verdon (Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence), Prof. Dr. Emile Schrijver (Jewish Cultural Quarter and National Holocaust Museum, Amsterdam), and Prof. Dr. Andrew McClellan (Tufts University, Boston).

Registration is available here»

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9.00  Registration

9.30  Welcome and Introduction
• Welcome — Stijn Bussels (Academic Director, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society)
• Introduction — Laurie Kalb Cosmo (University Lecturer and Project Director, Museum Lab, Leiden University)

9:50  Keynote
• Reflections on the History of the Public Art Museum — Carole Paul (Director of Museum Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara)

10.30  Coffee Break

11.00  Panel 1 | Monumental Legacies
Chair: Pieter ter Keurs (Emeritus, Leiden University)
• The Glyptotheque as a Site of Memory, Monumentality, and Transformation: Historical Identity and Contemporary Reflection of a Museum Institution in Croatia — Magdalena Getaldić (Glyptotheque of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts)
• Obelisks and Totems: On Reframing Ethnographic Museums and Why Artistic Practice Matters — Irene Quarantini (Sapienza University, Rome)
• The Palatine Gallery: How Residents of the Pitti Palace Shaped Today’s Museum — Ilya Markov (Leiden University)

12.20  Lunch break

13.20  Panel 2 | Reshaping Legacies: Italian Museums
Chair: Irene Baldriga (Sapienza University)
• Reshaping the Oldest Italian National Museum — Paola D’Agostino, (Musei Reali Torino)
• Legacies Now: The Renewal of Institutional Inheritances at Five Museums in Rome — Laurie Kalb Cosmo (Leiden University)
• Two Centuries of Legacy, One Decade of Inclusion. Political Backlash and Strategic Reframing of Outreach at the Museo Egizio — Costanza Paolillo (New York University)

14.40  Panel 3 | Founders’ Legacies
Chair: Susanne Boersma (Leiden University)
• The Long Shadow of the Founder. Hero-Worship and the Construction of Continuity for a ‘National Museum’ — Joachim Berger and Darja Jesse (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg)
• National Gallery in Prague throughout the 20th Century: The Case of the Morawetz Collection — Lucie Němečková (Documentation Centre for Property Transfers of the Cultural Assets of WWII Victims, Prague)
• Leache & Wood: Rediscovering the Chrysler Museum’s Lost Founders — Mia Laufer and Drew Lusher (Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk)

16.00  Tea Break

16.30  Panel 4 | Unseen Legacies: Belgian Museum Buildings
Chair: Annemarie de Wildt (Former Curator at the Amsterdam Museum, Board Member of CAMOC, ICOM)
• Inherited Workspaces: Rethinking Creative Practice at the Constantin Meunier Museum — Ulrike Müller (University of Antwerp/Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels)
• Haunted Halls: Reclaiming Hidden Histories of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels — Gerrit Verhoeven (University of Antwerp/Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels)
• Between Immersion and Reflection. Old Antwerp and Museum Mayer van den Bergh Performing the Past — Stijn Bussels (Leiden University) and Bram van Oostveldt (Ghent University)

17.50  Day Closing — Laurie Kalb Cosmo

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9.00  Introduction — Laurie Kalb Cosmo

9.10  Keynote
• Legacies: Gifts of Love, Sacred Trusts, Investments — Timothy Verdon (Director of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo/Museum of the Workshop of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence)

9.50  Keynote
• Developing and Opening Amsterdam’s National Holocaust Museum in a Politicized Era: Curatorial Challenges and Critical Choices — Emile Schrijver (Director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter and National Holocaust Museum, Amsterdam)

10.30  Coffee Break

11.00  Panel 5 | Revealing Histories and Reclaiming Heritage
Chair: Laurie Kalb Cosmo
• ‘My Heritage, Your Heritage?!’ Places of Jewish Heritage in Germany — Christiane Dätsch (Merseburg University of Applied Sciences
• POLIN Museum i Warsaw: A Place Where Memory Meets Responsibility — Joanna Fikus (POLIN, Warsaw)
• How to Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Museum Rietberg? Reflections on Researching and Curating the Institution’s History — Esther Tisa Francini (Museum Rietberg, Zurich)

12.20  Lunch break

13.20  Panel 6 | Eastern Europe: War and Recuperation
Chair: Seraina Renz (Leiden University)
• UNESCO and Museum Diplomacy: Geographies and Balances of Cultural Policy during the Cold War — Irene Baldriga (Sapienza University, Rome)
• Cultural Losses of Museums: The Polish Respond to World War II —Bartłomiej Sierzputowski and Elżbieta Przyłuska (Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Warsaw)

14.40  Panel 7 | Eastern Europe: (Post-)socialist Museums
Chair: Seraina Renz
• Shaping the Contemporary Art Museum Identity through its Complex Heritage. The Example of the Museum of Fine Arts in Split, Croatia —Jasminka Babić (Museum of Fine Arts, Split) and Dalibor Prančević (University of Split)
• Collecting to Forget: The Legacy of the Museum of Atheism in Vilnius — Karolina Bukovskytė (Lithuanian Culture Research Institute/National Museum of Lithuania, Vilnius)
• Whose Ethnography? Ethnographic Collections and Museums in Central Europe — Marika Keblusek (Leiden University)

16.00  Tea Break

16.30  Panel 8 | Revisiting Institutional Narratives
Chair: Wonu Veys, Leiden University/Wereldmuseum
• The Imperial Gaze Materialised: The Ten Thousand Chinese Things Museum as Archive — Yuansheng Luo (KU Leuven)
• Museum Histories in a Postcolonial Age: Collecting and Curating Netherlandish Art Legacies in the Global South — Laia Anguix-Vilches (Utrecht University)
• ‘You’re usually wrong’: Looking Back at the Anti-racism of the Past at One Museum — Deirdre Madeleine Smith (University of Pittsburgh/Carnegie Museum of Natural History)

17.50  Day Closing — Susanne Boersma

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9.00  Panel 9 | Modernist Legacies in the Americas
Chair: Stephanie Noach (Leiden University)
• Lourival Gomes Machado and the Legacy of a Certain Brazilian Modernism at MAM-SP — Ana Avelar (University of Brasília)
• Legitimating Modernism: Art History and the Formation of Museum Authority in the United States — Laura Braden (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
• (Re)Making the San Francisco Museum of Art Modern — Berit Potter (California State Polytechnic University Humboldt, Arcata)

10.20  Coffee Break

10.50  Panel 10 | Crafts and Material Legacies
Chair: Lieske Huits (Leiden University)
• Donating Lace and Knowledge: Women and Early 20th-Century Historic Lace Acquisitions in the Belgian Royal Museums for Art and History — Julie Landuyt (Ghent University/Free University of Brussels)
• Crafts’ Networks and the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples — Francesco Montuori (European University Institute, Florence)
• Preserving Heritage through Museums: The Case of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq — Chang Farhan Tahir (University of Duhok)

12.10  Lunch break

13.30  Panel 11 | Colonial Legacies
Chair: Wonu Veys (Leiden University/Wereldmuseum)
• Founding Myths and Colonial Entanglements: The Japan Folk Crafts Museum and the Politics of Mingei — Anna Stewart-Yates (University of Oxford)
• A Forgotten History: The Former Colonial Collection of the Royal Museums of Art and History, Belgium — Anke Hellebuyck (University of Antwerp)
• Rethinking Narratives: The ‘Animals of Africa’ in Bern — Sarah Csernay (Nordamerica Native Museum, Zurich)

14.50  Panel 12 | Prominent Figures and Entangled Histories
Chair: Susanne Boersma
• A Contested Museum History: Scenography and the Placement of the Islamic Collection at the Berlin Museums — Zehra Tonbul (Ozyegin University, Istanbul)
• Entangled Objects and Memory Sites in the Museum: Re-imagining the ‘Modern’ Collection — Juliet Simpson (Coventry University)
• The Museum as a Battleground: Political Art at the Israel Museum, 1967–1977 — Meital Raz (University of Amsterdam)

16.10  Tea Break

16.40  Keynote
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1909: Towards a Machine for Looking — Andrew McClellan (Tufts University, Boston)

17.25  Closing Remarks — Marika Keblusek (Leiden University)