CIMAM | ENDURING GAME: EXPANDING NEW MODELS OF MUSEUM MAKING

The 57^th CIMAM Annual Conference – International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, will open on November 28 at OGR Torino, the innovation and culture hub of Fondazione CRT. Until November 30, Turin will be the international capital of art, welcoming over 300 delegates worldwide.

Titled ‘Enduring Game: Expanding New Models of Museum Making’, with the guiding mantra “Of Necessity Virtue”, this year’s edition invites museum professionals to come together in a spirit of critical inquiry and collective imagination to explore the evolving role of contemporary art institutions in an increasingly complex global context.

It marks CIMAM’s return to Italy for the first time in almost fifty years, since its last event in the country took place in Bologna and Prato in 1976. The conference will take place at OGR Torino, the Fondazione CRT’s centre for innovation and culture, from 28 to 30 November.

The event, organized by CIMAM, is supported by Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT and Fondazione CRT, and curated by the Content Committee in collaboration with Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Fondazione Torino Musei, and Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, involving museums and institutions from the city.

Enduring Game: Expanding New Models of Museum Making
Of Necessity Virtue

Museums are active agents of social values. Understanding museums and their teams within a social and economic context goes far beyond any standardized political framework or performance checklist.

Rather than interpreting the real negatively, we must aim to invent the future museum from the new orders emerging. The aim of the CIMAM Annual Conference is therefore to analyze the current state, while predicting the future trajectories in contemporary art institutions. This year’s Annual Conference is all about combining the act of listening to voices that inspire and ignite our minds with the exercise of finding a language to describe emerging paradigms, emerging ways of organizing our teams, programs, contents. The museum’s tongue in times of a deep disregard of culture is fundamental to motivate the citizenship, to educate, to guard not only works and practices but freedom and the right to hope for an equal world.

This year the conference is designed as three collective working sessions around the paradox of having to face important and hard systematic changes – cuts and a growing climate of political and social antagonism – while inventing and revitalizing the social, pedagogical, and cultural mission of the multiple institutions dedicated to contemporary art.

Conference Program overview  
(November 28-302025)

The Content Committee proposes a carefully choreographed three-day program to foster deep engagement and shared reflection. Each day will open with a welcome address and by an artist’s intervention, followed by a 40-minute keynote address and by complementary performative acts, setting a tone of embodied and intellectual attentiveness.

Participants will then engage in working sessions in small groups, designed not as conventional discussions but as laboratories of thought, to create a climate in which more general, complex, and abstract reflections coexist with an active conversation about the problems and strategies that each of us considers relevant in the current situation. Listening to and contributing one’s own opinions in equal measure is one of the goals of this year’s conference.

To ensure that the wealth of these exchanges contributes to an architecture of shared knowledge, each day will conclude with a brief reporting session, synthesizing key ideas and outlining common and divergent perspectives.

Day 1: Doing Less vs. Doing Differently

The first day will open with a thought aimed at situating and better understanding the paradigm shift we are facing, so motivating participants to actively participate in the conference by breaking into groups with guest moderators. These initial sessions are intended to challenge ingrained assumptions and create a shared vocabulary for thinking about institutional transformation. By focusing on “doing less” not as withdrawal but as recalibration, we invite a reconsideration of the qualitative over the quantitative in cultural work.

Day 2: Mapping Desires

On this day, after the performance and keynote, a series of short presentations will invite delegates to articulate their pragmatic aspirations and to imagine institutional models that respond critically and constructively to the changing realities of the cultural sector, avoiding utopian idealism in favor of a grounded and resilient imagination.

Day 3: Transactions and Transmission. Tactics of Togetherness

On day three, we propose breaking into groups again to examine how museum communication as a transmission is perceived by audiences, interrogating the frameworks through which messages are transmitted—what is being communicated, how it is conveyed, and to what extent publics are meaningfully informed and engaged. At the same time, the sessions will explore the notion of ‘transaction’ not merely as an exchange of information, but as a model for expanded relationality—opening new potentialities for co-production and collaborative models of working within and beyond institutional boundaries.

This year’s conference positions itself as a forum for dialogue and imagination of the museum of the future, where theoretical and abstract thinking intersects with practical, grounded strategies. It is a gathering shaped by the belief that through collective, participatory engagement, museums can regain their balance and reaffirm their relevance in a fractured world.

Tour post-conferenza – Arte contemporanea nelle Langhe e a Milano
(1 e 2 dicembre 2025)

The post-conference tour will kick off on December 1 in the Langhe, renowned for its rolling vineyards and culinary delights. This region, surrounding Turin, has also become a vibrant, ever-growing hub for contemporary art.

A network of site-specific installations and open-air museums has transformed the landscape into a dynamic cultural itinerary. Some notable highlights include a striking multicoloured mural work by Liam Gillick and Hito Steyerl and a shimmering aluminium sculpture overlooking spectacular vineyards by French sculptor Jean-Marie Appriou, transforming the villages of Roddino & Neviglie.

The Cappella del Barolo, a once abandoned chapel, has been completely transformed by artists Sol Lewit and David Tremlett, and has become symbolic of the region’s fusion of art and landscape.

The Castelnuovo Calcea, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Camo Art Parks showcase large scale works by acclaimed artists like Carsten Höller, Marguerite Humeau, Ugo Nespolo and Emanuele Luzzati and many more, which visitors can explore by taking different walking paths. As well as taking a tour with an art historian to explore the region, we will also have the chance to do some wine tasting, and enjoy the ridiculously good food, spend a night in the charming town of Alba nestled in the heart of truffle country.

On 2 December we will head to Milan where we spend the day exploring dynamic art spaces such as the Prada Foundation and Hangar Bicocca.

The full programme for the annual summit, along with registration details, is available online on the  CIMAM website, insieme ai dettagli per la registrazione.

*********************

Content Committee 2025

The CIMAM 2025 Annual Conference is conceived and organized by the Content Steering Committee.

• Chus Martinez, (Chair of the Contents Committee), Director of the Institute Art Gender Nature in Basel, Switzerland.
• Chiara Bertola, Director, GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino, Torino, Italy.
• Bernardo Follini, Senior Curator, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy.
• Leevi Haapala, Dean, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Arts, Helsinki, Finland.
• Malgorzata Ludwisiak Ph.D., Museum Management Expert / Freelance Curator / Academic Teacher, Warsaw, Poland.
• Francesco Manacorda, Director, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Torino, Italy.
• Victoria Noorthoorn, Director, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Davide Quadrio, Director, Museo d’Arte Orientale (MAO), Torino, Italy.
• Kamini Sawhney, Head, Public Arts Projects, BlrHubba, Museum Management Expert, Independent Curator, Bangalore, India.

About CIMAM

CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) is the only worldwide network of directors and curators of modern and contemporary art museums. Founded in The Hague in 1962, CIMAM is an affiliated organization of ICOM (International Council of Museums).

CIMAM’s vision is of a world in which the cultural, social, and economic impact of modern and contemporary art museums, collections, and archives on society is widely recognized. To fulfill this vision, CIMAM’s mission is to create an international and professional forum to discuss and share knowledge on topics of interest through key initiatives, such as the CIMAM Annual Conference, provide support aligned with the ethical values of the ICOM and CIMAM Code of Ethics, establish guidelines, protocols, and benchmarks of best museum practice, and to contribute to the growth of the sector by facilitating cooperation and professional development. Led by an International Board of Museum Directors and Curators, the organization draws on the collective experience of its members to advance the sector and realize the shared vision.