CoMuseum is an annual conference that takes place in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece, as well as virtually. Established in 2011, CoMuseum is “more than a conference” that aims to foster the production of collective knowledges and the facilitation of networks between culture and arts professionals from all over the world. Acting as a peer-to-peer platform for the exchange of practical knowhow, CoMuseum addresses contemporary challenges facing museums and cultural organizations and helps develop soft and hard skills for cultural professionals. Strategic thematic pillars include sustainability, the future of content, education and audience engagement, leadership, and greening, while in the past few years we have been focusing on the above through the prism of social impact and well-being. The organizing partners are the Benaki Museum, Athens, the United States Embassy, and the British Council. CoMuseum has also become a flagship program of the British Council's Museums Revisited program in the European Union.

In 2022, the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, organized and launched the ground-breaking exhibition Radical Stitch, North America's largest ever beadwork exhibition to feature contemporary First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Native American artists. The exhibition, which has been awarded the 2024 Canadian Museums Association/Association des Musées Canadiens Award of Outstanding Achievement, is curated by an esteemed Indigenous curatorial team comprising Sherry Farrell Racette (University of Regina), Cathy Mattes (University of Winnipeg), and Michelle LaVallee (National Gallery of Canada) and joined a series of smaller exhibitions emerging in recent years that underscore the widespread and growing practices of beaders. Spanning two large gallery spaces, the exhibition brought together over 100 works by 48 artists from coast to coast to coast and from both sides of the imposed International Boundary dividing Canada and the United States.

With the birth of museums, came the Enlightenment idea that the contemplation of the works was an educational resource that was supposed to be available to the entire population. As a result, collections ostensibly became accessible to everyone (Bazin 1967; Cataldo and Paraventi 2007; Stermscheg 2014). Everybody could enjoy collections, whether they were curators and scholars, or not. Nevertheless, since curators and museums collected items rather carelessly, regardless of the available space, resulting in over-crowded premises, the idea of accessibility has begun to falter (Ames 1985; Crenn 2021; Ferriot 1995; Gilson 1914). Museums adopted several esthetic methods to lighten displays in order to address the unappealing presentation (Avery-Quash and Crookham 2018; Bazin 1967; Griesser-Stermscheg 2014; Murray 1904; Reinach 1909). Because many stored collections have not been displayed at all, the initial intent of their democratization has been compromised. As a result, a sizable portion of collections is accessible for study purposes for professionals only and not the general public. Therefore, the topic of stored collections and their uses has become contested since it endangers the museum's reputation as a place where anybody can access and appreciate its collections.

Abstract Although such research has long been mainstream in world cultures collections, natural history museums have only recently begun tracing their colonial histories, seeking to identify individuals obscured by power imbalances, and inviting consideration of specimens as artifacts of invasion, exploitation, and extraction, as well as scientific data. This article summarizes these developments within natural history, providing possible approaches and questions. It illustrates how the costs of the colonial project experienced by people and environments were intertwined and follow similar historical processes. Equally, the vital roles natural history collections are playing in researching global environmental crises can also be played by world cultures collections. By learning from each other's disciplinary research practices, natural history and world cultures collections have huge potential to increase their social relevance.

Exhibitions and accompanying publications are empowering and powerful vessels for maintaining and preserving Indigenous knowledges and practices for the more than 17 Moana Oceania diaspora communities living in Aotearoa New Zealand. We have had the honor of walking alongside two of these communities, Niue and Kiribati. For Niue, we had Molima Molly Pihigia QSM (Molly) as the Lead (on behalf of her group Falepipi he Mafola Niuean Handcraft Group Inc.) on the journey we took to develop and produce the exhibition and publication, both titled Fenoga Tāoga Niue i Aotearoa: Niue Heritage Journey in Aotearoa (Pihigia et al. 2023). The exhibition was first held at Māngere Arts Centre Ngā Tohu o Uenuku (MAC), in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland from 1 April to 20 May 2023; and then it toured to Pātaka Art + Museum, in Porirua, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, where it opened on 18 November 2023 running until 11 February 2024. With Kiribati, we were privileged to collaborate with I-Kiribati master makers Kaetaeta Watson and Louisa Humphry MNZM to co-curate the exhibition Tibuta – Kinaakiia Ainen Kiribati: Tibuta – Identifies Kiribati Women that was held at Pātaka Art + Museum from 7 October until 11 November 2023. We also helped to set up their publishing arm Te Rabakau Press and facilitated the production process of an accompanying publication, of the same name, launched at the closing of their exhibition (Lagi-Maama 2023).

Abstract This article explores how museum practices have evolved in producing knowledge, focusing on a new museum for life sciences and the environment. It proposes a curatorial practice that creates active zones of exchange, bringing together disciplines and breaking down traditional boundaries. This approach aims to produce new forms of knowledge and rethink human-environmental relations. Central to this is the reactivation of natural history collections. By weaving together a plurality of perspectives, material archives become portals into past, present and future ways of knowing. By highlighting human influence, often missing in depictions of nature, it aims to blur the lines between nature and culture. The article outlines these approaches with case studies and situates the future museum within a historical context.

Originating from the Ancient Greek Mouseion early examples, such as the Institute for Philosophy in Alexandria (founded c. 280 BC), museums1 were temple-like buildings set apart for study, and often associated with libraries. Scholars arrived from all parts of the (mainly Mediterranean) world not simply to consult the material but to meet like-minded people. Museums were places of intellectual and social commerce in an age when the concept of a university was in its infancy. As such they were found in the commercial heart of their locations; their buildings were surrounded by taverns, cafes, public spaces, temples, and shops where the scholar could be refreshed after a day's study. Two thousand years later, town planners would define such places as being “cultural quarters.” There are an estimated 105,000 museums in over 200 countries which, collectively, cover every field of artistic, scientific, cultural, and historical endeavor (Statista 2022a). Museums of all types (national, not-for-profit, local authority, university) collectively make a significant contribution to the tourism, leisure, and educational infrastructures of their countries. As distinct from public libraries (themselves of great antiquity), most modern museums would align their statement of purpose with the definition recently approved by the International Council of Museums (ICOM 2022): “collecting, conserving, documenting, interpreting and displaying objects of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for study and public education and enjoyment.”

The Critical Zones project is a multipronged intervention toward what it calls earthly politics—transforming human engagement with Earth’s processes. The project centers on an exhibition at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany—an institution known for its experiments in culture-making at the intersection of art, science, and politics. French academic Bruno Latour has long collaborated with the ZKM and its director, Peter Weibel. Critical Zones is their most recent collaboration, co-curated with Bettina Korintenberg and Martin Guinard.

[Re:]Entanglements: Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge (22 June 2021 to 20 April 2022)Greenwood Rising Center, Tulsa, OklahomaFirst Americans: Tribute to Indigenous Strength and Creativity, Volkenkunde, Leiden, the Netherlands (May 2020 to August 2023)Kirchner and Nolde: Up for Discussion, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (April–August 2021)Australians & Hollywood, National Film and Sound Archive, CanberraFree/State: The 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (4 March–5 June 2022)Te Aho Tapu Hou: The New Sacred Thread, Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato (7 August 2021 to 9 January 2022)West Encounters East: A Cultural Conversation between Chinese and European Ceramics, Shanghai Museum (28 October 2021 to 16 January 2022)The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum’s Permanent Exhibition, ShanghaiThe Way of Nourishment: Health-preserving Culture in Traditional Chinese Medicine, The Chengdu Museum, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China (29 June–31 October 2021)

Organized by the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology and Yunnan University, the Third Biennial International Museum Anthropology Conference took place 30–31 October 2021. Seventy-six scholars in the fields of museum studies and anthropology from around the world joined the conference online to explore the theme of “Heritage and Community.” The purpose of this conference is to take museum anthropology as an analytic framework to explore how ethnic minorities, nation-states, and the global community engage with the values of integrity, harmony, strength, and vitality through materials and cultural heritage.