Conference Panel | Museums and Migration: Global Flows and the Diaspora Experience

Date and time TBD.

The NACDI project Mobilizing the Museum will kick off this fall with a session at the 2025 Universities Art Association of Canada conference at York University. Chaired by NACDI member Sarah E.K. Smith, the session addresses museums and migration with a focus on diaspora museums.

Amidst a continued antagonistic response to migration, diaspora communities are increasingly establishing new museums in North America. These museums are predominantly small to mid-sized, community-driven, and complicate linear narratives of migration by foregrounding the complex ties of diaspora communities to home and host societies (Erdogan-O’Connor et al. 2023). Diaspora museums offer new encounters with migration narratives (Faherty 2023) and facilitate sharing these amongst diaspora communities and with public audiences. Engaging with this growing subsector of the museum field, this session brings together papers addressing diaspora museums globally, examining the complexities of this institutional formation and its potential to bridge understandings about migration experiences at a time of geopolitical adversity. Acknowledging that these institutions take shape in diverse, and, at times, informal settings, contributions also assess community spaces that offer museological functions, but are not professional museums.

Chair: Sarah E.K. Smith

Panelists: 

• Mélissa Andrianasolo (Université du Québec à Montréal), Creating an Afro-Canadian Narrative Through a “Citizen Collection” – Dissonant Oral Histories During a Live-Painting Amateur Session at the Afromusée, Montréal
• Alyshea Cummins (Carleton University), Preserving the Past, Inspiring the Future: The Office of Ismaili Heritage in Canada
• Sascha Priewe (Aga Khan Museum), Navigating Networks: Diaspora Museums at the Intersection of Institutional and Transnational Ties

For more details on the conference, see the Universities Art Association of Canada website.