Conference: Reserves – Current situation and new challenges

The ICOM Working Group on Collections in Storage, the International Committee for Museum Architecture and Technology (ICAMT), and Sorbonne Nouvelle University are organising an international conference in Paris from 29 to 31 October to address global museum storage challenges.

This event follows an international survey on museum reserves conducted by the Working Group, with results disseminated by ICOM. The conference aims to unite professionals and researchers to discuss the current state of museum storage, pivotal to the museum ecosystem, and its key challenges. Nearly one hundred speakers from around the world will participate in plenary and five parallel sessions, covering topics such as the current condition and organisation of reserves, management solutions, mediation, new reserves, and the future role of collections in museums.

The aim of this conference is to bring together professionals and researchers to discuss the issue of museum storage, to debate the current state of this sector at the heart of the museum system, its evolution and the main challenges associated with it, so that ICOM can best respond to these issues. It will bring together nearly a hundred speakers, in plenary sessions and parallel sessions. The themes addressed by the Conference, which was advertised in the call for papers and attracted more than 200 proposals, 80 of which were selected, are as follows:

1. Museum storage around the world: the state of play
2. (Re)organisation and solutions for the management of reserves
3. Mediation and communication around reserves
4. New reserves, new challenges
5. The place of collections in the museums of tomorrow

Among the Keynotes speakers : Bruno Brulon Soares, Mirjam S. Brusius, Marjolijn Debulpaep, Alain Godonou, Wouter Hijnberg, Jean Hilgersom, Sandra Kisters, Simon Lambert, Marica Mercalli, Massimo Osanna, Patricia Rahemipour and Hélène Vassal.

The programme is available here

Registration before 1 October

online form

The reserves survey is available here

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