In keeping with the theme of the conference to learn from today for the future, ICOM Canada and NACDI partnered on a well-attended session at the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) National Conference in Toronto on April 16, 2019 to explore the skill set and knowledge needed to be successful in a globally connected and aware museum practice. This panel brought together leading museum professionals who, for a good part of their careers, have been heavily involved in international collaboration, sharing Canadian museology across the globe. Their extensive experiences served as a jumping off point to outline a skill set for working internationally, be it in international networks and alliances, working abroad, or in and with specific countries and regions.
Anne Élisabeth Thibault, Director of Exhibitions & Technology Development, Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal Archeology and History Complex, shared examples of her and her museum’s extensive international work. In particular, she emphasized the notion of trust as a foundational requirement for successful collaboration. Chen Shen, Vice President Art & Culture and Senior Curator, Chinese Art & Culture, at the Royal Ontario Museum echoed her comments by foregrounding the importance of cultural sensitivity when dealing with Chinese museum professionals. Reflecting on his more than twenty-years of work between China and Canada, he also highlighted the maturity of the Chinese museum sector, which now requires a high level of engagement. Drawing, in turn, on his extensive experience as a curator engaged in international work, Gerald McMaster, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University, pointed to advocacy of work enabling dialogue. Speaking about a new project to connect Indigenous communities from the Amazon to those in the Arctic, McMaster’s comments underscored the potential and activist dimension of these types of connections. In this way, we can think beyond what panelist Lynda Jessup identified as “methodological nationalism” – our inclination to understand phenomena through associated nation-states, despite acknowledgment of globalization (and the mobility, flows and connections it has entailed). Jessup, Associate Dean (Graduate Studies and Global Engagement), in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen’s University and NACDI Director, rounded off the panel by speaking to the importance of acknowledging the local amongst the global. This call for a local/global practice framed the concluding discussions, which centred on the need for museum practitioners to move beyond perspectives located in the nationalist paradigm, in order to more fully engage the local as a means to speak to issues and imperatives of global relevance.
