International Conference "Rethinking Museums Politically: Berlin's Altes Museum, Museum Island and the (reconstructed) City Palace" 11-12 May 2017

International Conference "Rethinking Museums Politically: Berlin's Altes Museum, Museum Island and the (reconstructed) City Palace" 11-12 May 2017

Technische Universität Berlin,

Department for Art History

Dr Annette Loeseke, Dr Andrea Meyer

One of the first purpose-built public museums, Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum has been located across from the royal/imperial city palace, cathedral and armory in the historical city centre of Berlin. The conference seeks to reconsider the museum's political significance defined by its museological concept, performative architecture and symbolic urban location, and explore ways a public museum like the Altes Museum, in referring to its 'transhistorical' potential, might respond critically to contemporary political controversies about the reconstruction of a former royal/imperial city palace. How could museums‚translate‘ their museological inheritance into the 21st century and reconsider their socio-political relevance with regard to their current urban context? How could a local European case study serve as a model for discussing the increasingly complex political issues that museums face, in terms of public urban space as well as architectural symbols of political as well as corporate power in today’s city centres?

Tony Bennett (Western Sydney University)

Nikolaus Bernau (Berlin)

Tom Duncan (Duncan McCauley Berlin)

Paul Jones (University of Liverpool)

Suzanne MacLeo

d (University of Leicester, School of Museum Studies)

Bénédicte Savoy (Technical University Berlin / Collège de France, Paris)

Elsa van Wezel (Institut für Museumsforschung, Berlin)

Location: Technische Universität Berlin

11 May 2017: Department for Art History, Strasse des 17. Juni 150/152, Lecture Hall A 151

12 May 2017: Main Building, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, Lecture Hall H 3005