HE Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak is the Chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi and a member of the Executive Council of Abu Dhabi. Al Mubarak holds a number of other key management positions in Abu Dhabi, reflecting his strong leadership and strategic planning skills. Al Mubarak is the Chairman of twofour54, the media zone company which ensures the growth and sustainability of the region’s media industry. He is Chairman of Miral Asset Management, an organisation responsible for creating and managing projects in Abu Dhabi, and the Chairman of Aldar Properties, the leading real estate developer which is shaping the urban fabric of Abu Dhabi through its iconic developments. In addition, Al Mubarak is the Chairman Aldar Academies, the largest education provider in Abu Dhabi, and the Chairman of Image Nation Abu Dhabi, the film production company dedicated to building a strong film industry in the UAE.

Al Mubarak is a graduate of Northeastern University (USA), with a double major in Economics and Political Science.

Mariët Westermann is vice chancellor and chief executive of NYU Abu Dhabi. She previously served as executive vice president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where she oversaw grantmaking and research. Westermann was also the first provost of NYU Abu Dhabi and director of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, associate director of research at the Clark Art Institute, and a faculty member at Rutgers University. As a historian of Netherlandish art she has authored numerous scholarly and museum publications, including the widely read A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718, and curated the exhibition Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt (Denver Art Museum and Newark Museum). Her current research investigates the garden of Eden in the Judaic, Christian, and Islamic tradition. She earned a BA at Williams College and a PhD at the Institute of Fine Arts. Westermann serves on the boards of ALIPH - The International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Zones, and the Scholar Rescue Fund.

Manuel Rabaté has been Director of Louvre Abu Dhabi since 2016 and oversees all aspects of its operations and activity. The institution welcomed more than one million visitors in its first year, making it the 77th most visited museum worldwide in 2018. Rabaté has worked on the museum since its inception, joining Agence France-Muséums a year after the signature of the intergovernmental agreement between France and Abu Dhabi, first as CFO, then Secretary General and CEO (2008-2016). Rabaté was Deputy Director of Cultural Development (2005-2008) of musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac for its opening, managing the launch of the museum’s first touring exhibitions, notably Masques - Beauté des Esprits at the Bahrain National Museum. He was Deputy Director of the auditorium of musée du Louvre (2002-2006), where he participated in developing new programmes accompanying the creation of the Islamic Art department. He is a graduate of Sciences Po (1998) and HEC business school (2001), and a Knight of France’s National Order of Merit.

Hoor Al Qasimi is President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation. Her recent curatorial projects include solo exhibitions of the works of Tarek Atoui (2020), Zarina Bhimji (2020), Amal Kenawy (2018), Hassan Sharif (2017), Yayoi Kusama (2016), Robert Breer (2016), Farideh Lashai (2016), Rasheed Araeen (2014) and Susan Hefuna (2014). She was co-curator for Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige: Two Suns in a Sunset (2016) and major surveys such as When Art Becomes Liberty: The Egyptian Surrealists (1938–1965) (2016) and The Khartoum School: The Making of the Modern Art Movement in Sudan (1945–Present) (2016–2017). Co-curator of Sharjah Biennial 6 (2003), she has since continued as Biennial Director. She curated the UAE National Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2015) and the second Lahore Biennale (2020).

President of the International Biennial Association; Chair of the Board, Sharjah Architecture Triennial; Chair of the Advisory Board, College of Fine Arts and Design, University of Sharjah; and President of The Africa Institute, Sharjah, Al Qasimi serves on the Board of Directors for MoMA PS1, New York; Kunst-Werke Berlin e. V.; and Ashkal Alwan, Beirut as well as advisory boards for Khoj, New Delhi and Darat al Funun, Amman. She is also a member of the Prince Claus Award Committee (2016–present).

Prof. Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky is a historian and orientalist, a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Arts and a professor at Saint Petersburg State University. He has held the post of Hermitage Director since 1992 and launched the “Greater Hermitage” development programme that has consolidated the museum’s global role. He is the author of more than 300 books and papers covering Arabic manuscripts, Medieval monuments and ancient inscriptions, Islamic political history, Arabic culture, and the archeology of Arabia. He has authored several books about the Hermitage, including My Hermitage, For Museums There Are No Taboos and From the Scythians to Kiefer, and presented more than 300 original television programmes about the museum.

In 2003 he started the Department of Museum Management and Preservation of Historical Monuments at the Saint Petersburg State University and became its first head, and since 2011 he has headed the Department of the Ancient East. In 2013 he became Dean of the faculty Oriental Studies.

He chairs the board of Trustees of the European University in Saint Petersburg. He was the initiator of the establishment of the Union of Museums of Russia and serves as its president.

Michael Govan joined the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as Chief Executive Officer and Wallis Annenberg Director in 2006. In this role, he oversees all activities of the museum, from art programming to the expansion and upgrade of the museum’s 20- acre campus. During his tenure, LACMA has acquired by donation or purchase more than 56,000 works for the permanent collection, doubled gallery space and programs, and more than doubled its average annual attendance to well over one million. Currently the museum is in the process of building a new, state-of-the-art permanent collection building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor.

© Brigitte Lacombe

Maria Balshaw is Director of Tate, a role she has held since June 2017. She has overall responsibility for Tate’s strategic direction and day-to-day operations. She has worked to reframe the context and perspective of this long-established institution to engage with sensitive times, furthering the mission of inclusiveness and equality to connect with a wider audience. As Director, Maria is also the Accounting Officer appointed by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Previously, Maria was Director of the Whitworth, University of Manchester; Director of Manchester City Galleries; and Director of Culture for Manchester City Council.

Maria holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Liverpool and a Master of Arts degree in Critical Theory and a DPhil in African American Visual and Literary Culture from the University of Sussex. Maria is board member of the Clore Leadership Programme, Manchester International Festival and the National Museum Directors’ Council (NMDC) Executive Committee. In 2015, she was awarded a CBE for services to the arts.

Souraya Noujaim was appointed Scientific, Curatorial and Collections Management Director at Louvre Abu Dhabi in February 2018. She oversees and leads the curatorial strategy of the museum, the new developments of its narrative, the acquisition and research strategy as well as the exhibition programming. Noujaim is closely involved in the transfer of knowledge which contributes to training new young curators and museum professionals. Prior to her assignment, she was the lead curator at the Agence-France Museums responsible for the scientific and cultural programming of Medieval time galleries and Islamic art display.

Noujaim began her career at Musée du Louvre where she took part in the opening of the first Islamic Art Department rooms of Musée du Louvre and in landmark exhibitions at Musée du Louvre and Grand Palais. She has also worked for major cultural institutions such as Institut du monde arabe, British museum and École du Louvre, where she held in 2013 the Islamic Art history chair.

She holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Art History and Archaeology, with a degree in Museum Studies and postgraduate research diplomas from École du Louvre and Paris-Sorbonne University. She also studied Arabic Islamic civilisation at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO).

© Agence France-Muséums / Photo: Julien Chatelin

Mina Al-Oraibi is the Editor in Chief of The National newspaper, a daily English language regional newspaper based in Abu Dhabi. An Iraqi-British journalist, Mina has over 18 years of experience covering Middle Eastern, European and American affairs. She has conducted multiple high profile interviews including with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa AlKadhimi, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former President of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Prior to assuming the role of Editor in Chief of The National, Mina was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for State Effectiveness (ISE) and a Yale World Fellow. At ISE, Mina is working on developing policy recommendations for improved guidance in the Middle East and North Africa region, with a focus on Iraq and Syria.

Before starting her fellowship at Yale, Mina was the Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Alawsat, the international Arab-language daily newspaper 2011-2015. Previous to that, she was the Washington Bureau Chief for the newspaper.

Mina is an Advisor to the Global Dignity Day Movement and a member of the International Media Council. She is also a member of the board of trustees of the American University in Iraq – Sulaimani. Mina was named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Form. She completed her Bachelors of Arts (Honours) and Masters of Arts in Modern History from University College London.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is Professor of Philosophy and Law at NYU. He was born in London, but moved as an infant to Kumasi, Ghana, where he grew up. He took BA and PhD degrees in philosophy at Cambridge and has taught philosophy in Ghana, France, Britain, and the United States. He explored questions of African and African-American identity in In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture; examined the cultural dimensions of global citizenship in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers; and investigated the social and individual importance of identity in The Ethics of Identity. He’s also written three mystery novels. He has been President of the PEN American Center and serves on the Board of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Public Library and the Public Theater. In 2012 he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama. His most recent book is The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity. And he is now working on a book entitled “On the very idea of a religion.”

Chris Dercon is the President of the Rmn – Grand Palais since the 1st of January 2019. He is a Belgian art historian and curator, specialist in relations between ancient art and contemporary art. He has an international career and is fluent in four languages.

Chris Dercon is a recognized figure in the world of art and has had an important role in the direction and development of many major international museums for the last 30 years. He successively ensured the direction of the following cultural establishments since the nineties: the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, recently renamed as the Kunstinstituut Melly, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Tate Modern in London and the Berlin Volksbühne Theater.

Photo: Nicolas Krief

Manuel Borja-Villel (born 1957) has been the director of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid since 2008. Previously, he was the director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). Together with searching for new forms of institutionality, an important part of his programme in the MNCARS is centred on the development and reorganization of the collection, changing the method of presentation of works.

Recent exhibitions he has programmed and curated include: ‘Mario Merz. Time is Mute’ (2019), ‘The Poetics of Democracy. Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition’ (2018), ‘Russian Dada 1914–1924’, (2018), Lee Lozano, ‘Pulling out the Stops’, (2017), Rosa Barba, ‘Solar Flux Recordings’ (2017), ‘Pity and Terror in Picasso’s Path to Guernica’ (2017), ‘Marcel Broodthaers: A Retrospective’ (2016), ‘Territories and Fictions, Thinking a New way of the World’ (2016), ‘Not Yet, On the Reinvention of Documentary and the Critique of Modernism’ (2015), ‘Really Useful Knowledge’ (2014), and ‘Playgrounds, Reinventing the Square’ (2014).

Hamady Bocoum is an archaeologist by training, former Director of IFAN Ch. A Diop and author of several scientific articles and books. He served as Director of Senegal's Cultural Heritage from 2001 to 2015 and served as an expert on UNESCO's World Heritage Committee from 2012 to 2015 and the African World Heritage Fund (2010-2014). He prepared the World Heritage nominations for three cultural landscapes: the Senegambian megaliths, the Saloum Delta and the Bassari Country. A research director, he is an associate researcher at the CNRS and was a member of the Excavation Commission of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (France). For more than thirty years, he has led major archaeological programmes that have enabled the training of young archaeologists in Africa and forged relations between African, American and European universities. He now serves as Director General of the Museum of Black Civilizations.

Born in 1966, Hervé Barbaret graduated from the French École Nationale d'Administration (ENA, 1993) and Paris Dauphine University. Hervé Barbaret is also a Senior Counsellor at the French Court of Audit (Cour des Comptes).

Prior to his appointment at Agence France-Muséums, Hervé Barbaret had been General Secretary at the French Ministry of Culture since June 2017. He was supporting the French Minister of Culture by both managing the ministry, which employs 750 public servants, and implementing transversal cultural policies.

Hervé Barbaret has more than 15 years of experience in the cultural field where he held various positions such as Deputy General Director at the Cité de l'architecture et du Patrimoine (2004-2007), Managing Director of Musée du Louvre (2009-2015), Director of the Mobilier national (2015-2017) member of the Boards of Directors of Agence France-Muséums, Louvre Lens and of the Louvre Endowment Fund. Throughout his career, he has developed on-the ground managerial expertise as well as a high-level relational skills in both administrative and business sectors.

Before joining cultural institutions, Hervé Barbaret spent six years in the Chamber in charge of Culture at the Cour of Audit and worked more particularly on auditing public audiovisual companies. He has in-depth international experience and served for three years in India as Commercial Advisor at the French Embassy in New Delhi (1999-2003).

© Agence France-Muséums / Photo: Christophe Viseux

Yang Zhigang (杨志刚) is director of the Shanghai Museum. He was born in Shanghai in 1962. He graduated from the Department of History at the Fudan University with BA (1984), MA (1987) and PhD (1996). He was professor, doctoral supervisor and Dean of the Department of Cultural Heritage and Museology of Fudan University during 1987 to 2014. He was appointed as Director of the Shanghai Museum in 2014.

Director Yang is also the Chief-editor of Sciences of Conservation and Archaeology, Chair of the Academic Board of the Shanghai Museum and Chair of the Shanghai Museums Association. His academic background includes studies on cultural heritage, museology, and intellectual and cultural history of ancient China. He is the author of Study on the Ancient Chinese Etiquette System.

Director of Art Jameel since 2016, Antonia Carver oversees the arts organisation's work across learning and the arts, plus its new institutions: Jameel Arts Centre -- Dubai's contemporary art museum, which opened in November 2018 -- and the forthcoming Hayy: Creative Hub, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Based in the UAE since 2001, Antonia was previously Director of Art Dubai (2010-2016), and Editor/Projects Director at Bidoun (2004-2010).

Antonia has written extensively on Middle Eastern art and film for international and regional publications; edited books and journals; advised and programmed film festivals and arts, publishing and educational initiatives. Prior to moving to the UAE, Antonia was based in London, UK, where she served a number of roles, including as an editor at Phaidon Press; in development and projects at the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva); and in publishing at G+B Arts International. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a Master's in Social Anthropology in 1994.

© Art Jameel

Peter Gorgels is the Manager Digital Productions of the Rijksmuseum, including the museum’s website, Rijksstudio and the app.

Gorgels is always looking for innovative ways to improve the interaction of the audience with the masterpieces of the Rijksmuseum.

Hilary Knight is a senior leader and director, experienced in creating and delivering digital strategies and directing multiplatform projects to reach audiences at scale.

Currently Director of Digital at Tate, Hilary defines and leads the organisation’s strategy for advancing Tate’s mission to promote the public’s understanding and enjoyment of art online. She holds responsibility for Tate’s presence online and digital expression in the galleries, including immersive projects such as the BIMA award winning Modigliani VR experience.

Hilary has been commissioning, executive producing and directing digital projects since 2001. Previously at Film4, Channel 4 and the BBC, she has delivered a wealth of multiplatform projects for high profile public media and cultural organisations. These include large-scale cross-platform work for flagship drama series, a twice BAFTA nominated immersive experience, and innovative interactive projects for live youth music radio.

Passionate about the future of culture and cultural experiences, Hilary champions the use of creative thinking, experimentation, and adaptive processes to make connections between teams, audiences, stories, and objects, and to generate organisational change.

Olivier Mauco is a creator of video games, serious games and a researcher in game science and political science specializing in the analysis of speeches and ideologies of games. He is the author of the books GTA IV l'envers du rêve américain (GTA IV The Other Side of the American Dream) and Jeux vidéo hors de contrôle (Video Games Out of Control). He is the president of Game in Society and produced the video game Prism 7. 

He graduated from the Toulouse Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Toulouse), communication section. In 2004, he obtained a DEA Communication, Technologies, Pouvoirs in political science at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University. He earned his PhD from Panthéon-Sorbonne University focusing on the impact of regulatory policies on video game content.

Anna is CoFounder of Smartify, the world’s most downloaded museum app used by millions to discover and learn about art. Smartify works with museums, galleries and collectors internationally and has won numerous awards including the 2019 UN World Summit Award for Culture and Tourism; Most Innovative App at the Mobile World Congress 2018 and three Webby Awards. In 2019 Anna was appointed a Trustee of the Tate, making her the youngest ever trustee of a UK national museum. Previously, Anna worked as arts officer for the London Borough of Camden and producer at the National Museum of Fine Art, Argentina.

The Museum of the Future will be a place of expansive storytelling, as well as being one of the first future oriented museums in the world. An flagship project of Dubai Future Foundation, the Museum of the Future, is a visionary cultural institution based on a unique initiative by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

As Executive Director, Lāth ensures that all aspects of the Museum inspires visitors and enables them to learn, explore, and actively participate in building an optimistic and hopeful future.

Throughout his career, Lāth has been at the forefront of technology and museum practice. At the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, he created exhibitions while completing his degree in Cultural Anthropology. From there, Lāth’s interest in interactive design and engineering led him to become a designer and project manager at the Please Touch Children’s Museum in Philadelphia and the Franklin Institute Science Museum.

From 2012-2015, Lāth held the position of Vice President, Exhibits and Content Development, at The Tech Museum of Innovation in Silicon Valley. In 2015, The Tech was awarded the highest honor an American museum can achieve: a National Medal for Museum and Library Service.

Before his directorship at the Museum of the Future, he was the founding Executive Director of Living Computers: Museum + Labs in Seattle, Washington, a project initiated by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen.

Lāth has served on the board of the National Association for Museum Exhibition and is a Noyce Leadership Institute Fellow. He has also taught in graduate museum studies programs at the University of Washington and the University of the Arts, where he occupied a Senior Lecturer post.

Sara bin Safwan works as a curator in both institutional and grass-roots levels in the UAE. She has a BA in Culture, Criticism and Curation from Central Saint Martins, London (2015) and currently works as Curator for Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a member of the curatorial team responsible for defining the curatorial vision for the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi museum. In 2016, she founded the art platform, Banat Collective which focuses on discussing intersectionality and womanhood within the context of MENA through art and writing. The collective released their first self-published publication, In The Middle of it All (2018), a 31-artist collaboration of visual art, writing and poetry focused on the intricacies of coming of age as a woman in the Arab world. The collective is currently preparing for their first large-scale exhibition upcoming in early 2021. Bin Safwan was also a part of Art Jameel's, Dubai first edition of the Youth Assembly (2019).

Gene Kogan is an artist and a programmer who is interested in autonomous systems, collective intelligence, generative art, and computer science. He is a collaborator within numerous open-source software projects, and gives workshops and lectures on topics at the intersection of code and art. Gene initiated ml4a, a free book about machine learning for creative practice, and regularly publishes video lectures, writings, and tutorials to facilitate a greater public understanding of the subject.

David Joseph Wrisley is Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi. He holds an AB from the University of Chicago and a MA and PhD from Princeton University. Before joining NYU Abu Dhabi in 2016, he served on the faculty at the American University of Beirut, where he was Chair of the Department of English from 2010-2014.

His current research interests include the use of digital methods for humanities research, working with textual and spatial data, as well as innovative forms of visualization and machine learning/AI. He is particularly interested in team-based, collaborative research in the humanities; one current project with the Research Center of the Louvre Abu Dhabi involves training neural networks to transcribe medieval manuscripts held in their collections. He has also founded or co-founded a variety of digital humanities projects specific to the Arab world, most recently OpenGulf (opengulf.github.io) for a data-centered, historical study of the Arabian Gulf region. His community outreach involves launching two digital humanities events in service of innovation in interdisciplinary research in the region: the Digital Humanities Institute Beirut in 2015 and the Winter Institute in Digital Humanities (wp.nyu.edu/widh) in 2020.

H.E. Saood Al Hosani has been appointed the Acting Undersecretary of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi since January 2020. After joining DCT Abu Dhabi in June 2016, he served as Acting Executive Director of Business Support from September 2017 to December 2018, and Executive Director of Business Support from January 2019 to January 2020, during which time he played a key role in shaping the strategy and goals of the organisation and achieving excellence across its operations.

A seasoned veteran in his field, Al Hosani has over 19 years of experience in strategy, planning and financial management across tourism, culture, media, tech solutions, financial services and investment. A key contributor to growth, he has devised strategies for many corporate departments.

He has held several important positions, including Financial Manager and Acting Head of Finance and Administration at Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, and Chief Financial Officer at Advanced Integrated Systems.

Al Hosani is a member of numerous local and international committees, such as the Finance and Development Committee at the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH); the Audit Committee at the Abu Dhabi Health Services Co. (SEHA); the Steering Committee of the TAMM initiative; and Abu Dhabi Sustainability Group.

Al Hosani holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from the Higher Colleges of Technology.

Françoise Benhamou is an economist, Professor at Sorbonne-Paris Nord University and member of the Cercle des Economistes. She chairs the Ethics Committee of Radio France. She is a member of ARTE channel's program advisory committee; of the Conseil des ventes volontaires; of the Scientific board of the DEMOS program (Philharmonie de Paris). She served for 6 years on the Board of the Musée du Louvre. Among her books, Economie du patrimoine culturel, La Découverte, 2nd ed. 2019.

Art Explora was created by Frédéric Jousset, a French entrepreneur and a great patron of culture. After graduating from HEC Paris in 1992 (he currently chairs the HEC Alumni network), he co-founded Webhelp, a 50,000 people -strong global leader in business process outsourcing (BPO). Fond of art and heritage, Frédéric Jousset is a committed actor in culture, President of Beaux-Arts & Cie (French art newspaper Beaux-Arts Magazine), owner of the Relais de Chambord, he chaired the board of directors of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris from 2011 to 2014. Administrator of the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs and « Grand Patron » of the Louvre Museum since 2016, he has been notably involved with the Museum in organizing conferences in prisons. In 2018, he was also tasked by the French President to lead the working group for the launch of the Pass Culture, an engagement of President Emmanuel Macron for the cultural sector, which consists in a platform giving access to a large cultural offer to each citizen reaching majority. Frédéric is also a shareholder in a number of high growth startup companies across Europe, many within the art world, including Arteum (museum shops), Incubart (art platform) and Artsper (art market place). He is the recipient of various orders including Commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters, Knight of the French National Order of Merit and Knight of the French National Order of the Legion of Honour.

© François Roelants, November 2019, Paris

Peter Keller was appointed Director General of the International Council of Museums in 2017. Prior to this, he was the Director of the Salzburg Cathedral Museum (Dommuseum), Austria, where from 2007 to 2014, he led a project to merge the Dommuseum with three other museums in Salzburg to form a new innovative institution, the DomQuartier, which sustainably strengthened the structures and significantly increased visitor numbers. Before joining the Dommuseum in 2002, he worked at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin for three years. He studied art history in Vienna, Bonn and Cologne and museology in Paris.

Since 2003, Peter Keller has served as Treasurer of ICOM, Secretary of ICOM’s International Committee for Historic House Museums (DEMHIST) and as a board member of the ICOM Austrian National Committee. He was also a member of the museum accreditation panel and the national advisory council for museums in Austria.

As ICOM Director General, Peter Keller’s focus is on strengthening ICOM’s network by improving the Secretariat’s organisation, fostering communication both internally and externally, and reinforcing ICOM’s presence in order to ensure that its members benefit from their affiliation: “ICOM is an association of museum professionals, and the only global museum association.”

When the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, he realigned the Secretariat’s activities, supporting the global museum community to overcome the challenges. ICOM published statements and recommendations regarding funding and security, a survey about the situation of museums and museums professionals around the globe, as well as a series of webinars on developing strategies for the future relating to local communities, online activities, and employment.

Appointed Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in April 2018, Max Hollein is responsible for guiding the Museum’s artistic vision and all of its programming, research, and collection initiatives. An accomplished director for 20 years, Hollein oversees The Met’s curatorial, conservation, and scientific departments; exhibition and acquisition activities; education and public outreach; as well as the libraries, digital projects, publications, imaging, and design.

Prior to joining The Met, he was the Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where his tenure was characterized by visionary programming, pioneering acquisitions, and rigorous fiscal management. Previously he simultaneously led the Schirn Kunsthalle, the Städel Museum, and the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt, Germany, as Director and CEO, all of which experienced significant growth and increased attendance during his tenure.

Born in Vienna, Hollein studied at the University of Vienna (Master of Art History) and the Vienna University of Economics (Master of Business Administration). He began his career at New York's Guggenheim Museum as Chief of Staff to the Director and six years later assumed his leadership role in Frankfurt. Hollein has published and lectured widely and has organized a number of major exhibitions in modern and contemporary art. He is a member of supervisory and advisory boards of major cultural institutions worldwide, including the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; National Gallery, Prague; and Neue Galerie, New York. Named a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2009 and a recipient of the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and the Arts, he received the Goethe badge of honor (the Hessian Ministry of Culture's highest accolade) in 2016, among other international awards.

Fiammetta Rocco is a Senior Editor, and the culture correspondent of both The Economist and 1843. Between 2003 and 2018 she was Editor of Books and Arts. She has written two Economist special reports, one on the art market and the other on the future of museums. She has also served on several book prizes, both for fiction and non-fiction, and is the administrator of the Man Booker International Prize for fiction.

Jean-Luc Martinez has been the president and director of the Louvre Museum since 2013.

Jean-Luc Martinez hold a PhD in History and graduated from the Ecole du Louvre. He was a member of the French School in Athens from 1993 to 1996. His scientific works and publications focus on Greek and Roman sculpture and the reception of ancient art in the modern era.

Under his direction, the Louvre has comforted its position as the world's leading museum, with more than 10 million visitors in 2018 and nearly 9.6 million visitors in 2019. In 2019-20, the exhibition dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, 500 years after his death, attracted nearly 1.1 million visitors, a record in the history of the Louvre Museum.

In 2013, Jean-Luc Martinez became Chairman of the Scientific Council of Agence France-Muséums (AFM). In this capacity, he established the programming of the first five years of exhibitions at the Louvre Abu Dhabi by coordinating the proposals of the French museums. In 2017, the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi represented a key step in France's cultural diplomacy. Heavily involved in this extraordinary project, he and Jean-François Charnier, then scientific director of AFM, conceived the narrative for the display of the museum’s permanent collections. He is also vice-chairman of the acquisition commission of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. He authored a report commissioned by the President of France on the protection of heritage in conflict zones (2015) which led to the creation of the international fund ALIPH (international alliance for the protection of heritage in conflict zones).

Jean-Luc Martinez is the author of numerous scientific publications and has curated several exhibitions, including the inaugural exhibition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, From One Louvre to Another: Opening A Museum For Everyone.

He is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Chevalier of the National Order of Merit.

Didier Fusillier was born in Valenciennes in 1959.

In 1990, he was appointed Director of the Manège de Maubeuge until 2015 and Director of the Maison des Arts et de la Culture André Malraux in Créteil from 1993 to 2015.

He designed, from 1999 to 2004, Lille’s project for European Capital of Culture. He currently works as artistic adviser of the cultural association lille3000, which was created in the wake of the event.

In 2015, he was appointed President of the public establishment La Villette. He was the artistic director for the Nuit Blanche 2019, an all-night cultural event organised by the city of Paris.

He is also the designer of local cultural platforms Micro-Folies that are supported by France’s Ministry of Culture and spread in France and abroad.

© Maxime Dufour Photographies

Eugene Tan has been Director of National Gallery Singapore since May 2013. He takes the lead on key museological and curatorial aspects of the Gallery’s work and also plays a key role in influencing the intellectual framework that guides the display and further development of the Gallery’s collections.

On 1 April 2019, he was appointed Director of Singapore Art Museum to guide it towards its vision of becoming a leading museum of contemporary art, while retaining his role as Director of National Gallery Singapore.

Prior to this, he served as Programme Director (Special Projects) at the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and oversaw the development of the Gillman Barracks art district. He has also held various positions including Director of Exhibitions for Osage Gallery, Director of Contemporary Art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art – Singapore, as well as Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore.

Eugene has published and curated widely, organising exhibitions including the Singapore Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005), the inaugural Singapore Biennale (2006) and Reframing Modernism: Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond (2016) and Minimalism: Space. Light. Object. (2018) at National Gallery Singapore. He also serves as a board member of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM) and Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp. 

© Singapore Art Museum

Zeina Arida is the director of the Sursock Museum. Her career in the Lebanese cultural sector spans over twenty five years. From 1997 to 2014, she was the director of the Arab Image Foundation (AIF), where she set up and managed various artistic and photographic preservation projects. She also served as a board member of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) from 2006 to 2012, and was a member of the Prince Claus Fund Network Partner Committee from 2007 to 2013. She is currently a member of the Board of the Directors of MUCEM, Marseille; a member of the Advisory Board of Darat Al Funun, Amman; and a member of the Scientific Committee of Beit Beirut.

Tim Jones manages Culture Mile, a cultural district in the heart of London, on behalf of the City of London Corporation and in partnership with the Barbican Centre, the Museum of London, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Tim is a senior director, consultant, producer and broker specialising in culture, place, and social change, working across all art forms and between the commercial, cultural and civic sectors. Tim has delivered major cultural placemaking strategies for sites in Europe, the USA and Australia including for Heathrow Airport, Wembley Park and for the ‘Avenue of the Arts’ in Boston.

Tim is a member of the Placemaking Leadership Council at the Project for Public Spaces, the Placemaking Collective UK and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi is the UAE’s Minister of Culture and Youth since July 2020, where she is responsible for fostering UAE-based cultural initiatives on both national and international level, develop policies, legislations and infrastructure that support cultural activities, cement the UAE’s position as a hub of digital content and media industry and empower the youth within the community to contribute to the creative economy. In addition to her ministerial responsibilities, Al Kaabi is President of Zayed University and Chair of the National Commission for Education, Culture and Science. Previously, she has held the post of Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development, Minister of State for Federal National Council Affairs and Chairperson of Abu Dhabi Media and twofour54. Al Kaabi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems from UAE University, 2001 and completed an Executive Leadership Programme at the London Business School in 2011.

Photo: Mohamed Somji

Krzysztof Pomian, born in Warsaw, Poland, 1934, historian and philosopher, director of research emeritus at the CNRS, Paris, professor emeritus at the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland.

As a philosopher, he is particularly interested in epistemology. As a historian, he worked extensively on the history of European culture and especially on history of history - historiography, historical researches, institutions of history – and on history of museums and collections.

His works written mostly in Polish and in French were translated into some twenty languages.

Last books in French: Des saintes reliques à l’art moderne. Venise–Chicago XIIIe–XXe siècle, Gallimard, Paris 2003 - Ibn Khaldûn au prisme de l’Occident, Gallimard, Paris, 2006 – avec Elie Barnavi, La révolution européenne 1945-2007, Perrin, Paris, 2008 - Le Musée, une histoire mondiale, I Du trésor au musée, Gallimard, Paris, 2020.

Elif is an author and a thought leader whose work is at the intersection of arts, culture, human development, innovation, and social progress. She is a historian of Islamic art, and a museums scholar who is committed to creating fertile grounds of empathy through informal learning platforms to inspire positive behavior change, caring mindsets, and compassionate worldviews that value all of humanity and the planet. She is the editor of two visionary books on empathy-building: Fostering Empathy Through Museums (2016), and Designing for Empathy: Perspectives on the Museum Experience (2019), which was published by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). Elif curated and led the world’s first multidisciplinary Empathy Summit with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2018, in Dharamsala, India. The Designing for Empathy Summit, in its third year in 2020, continues to bring innovators from different disciplines, and sectors from around the world to create solutions to the empathy deficit in our global community. Dr. Gokcigdem continues to present her work in experiential empathy-building workshops, as well as in conferences on arts, museums, peace-building, entrepreneurship, and innovation. She is an advisor to several pioneering empathy initiatives by major U.S. museums, including arts museums as well as zoos and aquariums, and collaborates with leading engineering schools in the U.S. to continuously develop and prototype empathy-building tools. She can be reached via: greatolivetree@gmail.com, and: www.elifgokcigdem.com.

Dacher Keltner received his PhD from Stanford University in 1989, and after a NIH post doc served as a professor at UW Madison and now is a professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley. Desiring to translate the new science of emotional well-being to a broader audience, he founded the Greater Good Science center in 2001, and is currently its faculty director (greatergood.berkeley.edu). Dacher’s research focuses on the functions states such as compassion, awe, gratitude, love, and embarrassment, as well as power, social class, and inequality. He is the author of over 200 scientific articles, six books, and many popular writings (e.g., for the New York Times), and been central to two training grants. Dacher has won many research, teaching, and service awards, and consulted for Pinterest, the Sierra Club, for Pixar’s Inside Out, and for the Center for Constitutional Rights in its work to outlaw solitary confinement.

Professor Helen Chatterjee is a Professor of Biology in UCL Biosciences and UCL Arts & Sciences. Her research includes biodiversity conservation, cultural and natural value, object-based learning, and evidencing the impact of natural and cultural participation on health; she co-founded the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance, is an advisor to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts and Health, Chairs the Royal Society for Public Health’s SIG in Arts and Health, and serves on the IUCN Section on Small Apes. Her interdisciplinary research has won a range of awards including a Special Commendation from Public Health England for Sustainable Development and most recently the 2018 AHRC-Wellcome Health Humanities Medal and Leadership Award; she received an MBE in 2015 for Services to Higher Education and Culture. Helen has written four books 'Touch in Museums: Policy and Practice in Object Handling' (Berg Publications, 2008), ‘Museums, Health and Well-being’ (Routledge, 2013), ‘Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education’ (Routledge, 2015), ‘Material Connections: From Object-Based Learning to Object-Based Well-being’ (Taylor Francis, 2020) and over 50 research articles.

Maral Jule Bedoyan is a museum education specialist with a Master's degree in museums and gallery practice. Passionate about all things arts, culture and communication - She has been living and working in museums across the GCC for over 10 years. Currently heading the education department at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Maral is leading the initiative of the museum’s Art for Health & Wellbeing program.

Kavita Singh is Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics of Jawaharlal Nehru University where she teaches courses in the history of Indian painting, particularly the Mughal and Rajput schools, and the history and politics of museums. Singh has published on secularism and religiosity, fraught national identities, and the memorialization of difficult histories as they relate to museums in South Asia and beyond. She has also published essays and monographs on aspects of Mughal and Rajput painting, particularly on style as a signifying system. In 2018, she was awarded the Infosys Prize in Humanities and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.

© Infosys Science Foundation

Thomas Crow is the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art. He is the author of two influential studies of eighteenth-century French painting: Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (1985), which received the Morey Prize from the College Art Association, and Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France (1995). Subsequent publications include The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent, the essay collection Modern Art in the Common Culture, and The Intelligence of Art. His most recent books are The Long March of Pop: Art, Design, and Music, 1930–1995; No Idols: The Missing Theology of Art; Restoration: the Fall of Napoleon in the Course of European Art; and the just-published The Hidden Mod in Modern Art, London 1956-1969.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary degrees from Pomona College and the University of London. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in 2014 and delivered the Andrew W. Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery in 2015.

Before his appointment at the Institute of Fine Arts, Crow was director of the Getty Research Institute, professor of art history at the University of Southern California, professor and chair in the history of art at the University of Sussex, and the Robert Lehman Professor of the History of Art at Yale.

Photo: Luca del Baldo

Laurence des Cars (born in 1966) general heritage curator, was appointed President of the Public Establishment of the Musée d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie in March 2017.

A specialist in 19th and early 20th century art, Laurence des Cars was a curator at the Musée d’Orsay from 1994 to 2007; from 2007 to 2014, she was Scientific Director of Agence France-Muséums. In January 2014, Laurence des Cars was appointed Director of the Musée de l’Orangerie.

She published Nineteenth Century French Art (1819-1905) (Flammarion, 2006), edited by Henri Loyrette and in collaboration with Sébastien Allard. She edited Louvre Abu Dhabi, Birth of a Museum (Flammarion, 2013), and was one of the curators for the “Louvre Abu Dhabi, Birth of a Museum” exhibition presented at the Musée du Louvre in 2014.

Since 2017, Laurence des Cars has completely renewed and revitalised the world-class Impressionism and Post-Impressionism collections of the Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, rolling out a programme of exhibitions, live shows and a new presentation of the works oriented towards all audiences, and open to the artists of today.

Laurence des Cars is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Chevalier of the National Order of Merit and Officer of Arts and Letters.

© Franck Ferville

Kaywin Feldman (b. 1966, Boston, MA, USA) has an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, an MA in Museum Studies from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London, and a BA, Summa cum laude, in Classical Archaeology from the University of Michigan. In March 2019, she became Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She is the fifth director in the Gallery’s history, and the first woman to hold this important national position.

Prior to joining the Gallery, Kaywin led the Minneapolis Institute of Art as its Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President. During that time, she doubled attendance, expanded the collection, launched and completed visionary strategic plans, and transformed the museum’s relationship to the Twin City community and to the nation through groundbreaking initiatives such as the Center for Empathy & the Visual Arts. 

She is a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the White House Historical Association, and the Chipstone Foundation, and a member of the State Hermitage Museum International Advisory Board. She is a past president of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and past chair of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). She has lectured widely and published numerous articles on many aspects of museums in the 21st century.

Manal Ataya is a museum professional with 15 years of senior executive experience in museum development and cultural diplomacy.  As Director General of the Sharjah Museums Authority, for over a decade, she is responsible for the overall management of 16 museums in the emirate of Sharjah, UAE. Her mandate includes strategic development of future museum projects, advising in museum & cultural policy, fostering partnerships with the international museum community and delivering community initiatives rooted in social responsibility. The current museum offering covers Islamic culture and history, contemporary art, heritage, maritime history, archaeology, science and children's learning.  She is responsible for the implementation of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi’s directives for future museum and cultural heritage related projects. Ataya is a highly respected leader in the UAE cultural sector and is regularly invited to speak at local and international events on topics including museum education, community engagement, women empowerment, cultural diplomacy and Islamic art.

She currently serves on numerous advisory boards including the College of Fine Art & Design-University of Sharjah, Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN), Make A Wish Foundation-UAE, and ICCROM-Sharjah, the field office of the UN’s body for cultural heritage management in the Arab world. She is also a Global Ambassador for the ‘Equality for Growth’ initiative of Thinkers & Doers Institute in Paris, France. Ataya was awarded the Chevalier ‘Order of Arts & Letters’ by the Republic of France in 2018 for her significant contributions to culture.

Ataya is a graduate of both Hamilton College (2001) and Harvard University (2004), USA.

Professor Dr. Amareswar Galla - an alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Australian National University, Canberra and the Salzburg Global Fellowship, is currently Professor of Inclusive Cultural Leadership & Director, International Centre for Inclusive Cultural Leadership, and Dean of Faculty Development and Leadership, Anant National University, Ahmedabad, India; Founding Member UNESCO UNITWIN Network for Culture, Tourism and Development Sorbonne 1 Parthenon and Founding Executive Director of the International Institute for the Inclusive Museum, Australia/India/USA); formerly full Professor of Museum Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane and prior to that full Professor and Director of Sustainable Heritage Development, Australian National University, Canberra; until recently Chief Curator, Amaravathi Heritage Town (birthplace of Mahayana Buddhism) India; former Vice President, International Executive Council of ICOM, Paris (2004-2007); former President of ICOM Asia Pacific Executive Board (1998-2004); Founding Chairperson and Editor Inclusive Museum movement, Leiden, 2008-2022 (onmuseums.com); Chaired the drafting and adoption of the ICOM Cultural Diversity Charter, Shanghai, 2010; accredited mentor, UNESCO 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention; extensive publication record ranges from World Heritage: Benefits Beyond Borders, Cambridge University Press & UNESCO Publishing, 2012 (French and Korean translations 2013) to Heritage Curricula and Cultural Diversity, Prime Minister & Cabinet, Australia, 1993.

(a.galla@yahoo.com.au ) (http://inclusivemuseums.org)

Salah M. Hassan is the Director of The Africa Institute and the Goldwin Smith Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture in the Department of Africana Studies and Research Center, as well as in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, and also serves as Director of the Institute for Comparative Modernities. Hassan is editor and co-founder of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (Duke University Press, and a member of the editorial advisory board of Journal of Curatorial Studies, and international Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. In addition to numerous essays to journals, anthologies, and exhibition catalogues of contemporary art, and has authored, edited, and co-edited several books, including Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist (2013); Darfur and the Crisis of Governance: A Critical Reader (2009); Diaspora, Memory, Place (2008); Unpacking Europe (2001); Authentic/Ex-Centric (2001; and Art and Islamic Literacy among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria (1992), among others. Most recently, Hassan edited and introduced Ibrahim El-Salahi: Prison Notebook (MoMA and Sharjah Art Foundation Publications, 2018), and the forthcoming Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2020).

Hassan has curated international exhibitions including Authentic/Ex-Centric at the 49th Venice Biennale, (2001), Unpacking Europe (Rotterdam, 2001-02), and Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist was published in 2012 held at The Tate Modern in London (2013) and at the Sharjah Art Museum in Sharjah, UAE (2012). He is the recipient of fellowships including the J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship as well as major grants from Sharjah Art Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Afrique en Creations, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Prince Claus Fund.

Emily leads high profile projects across the BBC, including the award-winning Crossing Divides season bringing people together in a fragmented world across lines of faith, politics, ethnicity, and generation, which featured on TV, radio, and digital in the UK and across the world. She is currently Executive Editor for the BBC 100 Centenary project, BBC 100. In her award-winning BBC career, Emily previously founded, edited and occasionally presented The Forum, the flagship weekly interdisciplinary radio discussion show, after running the Arts and Religion departments of the BBC World Service, and has reported and produced for the BBC across five continents. She’s been a visiting Fellow at Said Business School at the University of Oxford and a Senior Advisor to the Skoll Foundation. She sits on the board of the HH Wingate Foundation, writes for an array of publications including the BBC, the Financial Times, The Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, and gives keynotes and hosts panels for global conferences. In addition, she is an Executive Coach and a practitioner in Residence at the LSE undertaking work on Deep Listening.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont is the director and CEO of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a new museum under construction in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park. Tasked with leading the institution through its opening and beyond, Jackson-Dumont came to the Lucas Museum from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she served as the Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education from 2014 to 2019. She also served for eight years as the deputy director for education and public programs and adjunct curator of modern and contemporary art at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), and held positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other cultural organizations. Known for her ability to blur the lines between academia, popular culture, and non-traditional art-going communities, Jackson-Dumont is invested in curating experiences that foster dynamic exchanges between art/artists, past/present, public/private, and people/places. A native of San Francisco, Jackson-Dumont received her B.A. in art history from Sonoma State University in California and her M.A. in art history from Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Rebecca Schear

Nujoom Alghanem is an Emirati poet, artist, and film director. She has published eight poetry collections and produced numerous films including seven feature documentaries and short fiction, documentary, and art films. Her films have won over 40 regional and international prizes. In 2019, she was the solo artist of the UAE National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, one of the most prestigious art events in the globe. She also received the Pride of the UAE Medal through the Mohammed bin Rashid Government Excellence Award. Nujoom co-founded Nahar Productions, a film production company based in Dubai, and is a professional mentor and trainer in art practices, filmmaking and creative writing. She is currently a trustee of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, as well as an advisor to educational and cultural organizations.

© UAE Pavilion

Dr. Peter Magee is Director of Zayed National Museum, which is under construction by the Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT) in Abu Dhabi. He has directed heritage research projects throughout the Middle East since 1994 and continues to serve as the Head of Archaeology and Palaeontology with DCT. His work was initially located in the academic sphere, serving for 20 years as a Professor and then Chair of Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, USA. Prior to that he held academic appointments in Belgium and Australia. He has published over 50 scientific papers and several books on the history and archaeology of the Arabian Gulf. His most recent academic book The Archaeology of Prehistoric Arabia was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. He has received numerous grants and awards, including the 2017 Sheikh Mubarak bin Mohamed Award for services to the UAE's history and archaeology. He currently serves on the board of the International Association for the Study of Arabia, based in the UK, and in March 2016 was elected a Fellow of The Society of Antiquaries, a Learned Society established by Royal Charter in 1751. He holds Irish and British citizenship.

Dr. Caroline Autret is an assistant professor, Head of the Department Archaeology and History of Art at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. Before being appointed at SUAD, she was teaching in France and was awarded several postdoctoral fellowships (in Turkey, Switzerland and France). Dr. Caroline Autret is an archaeologist specialized in the Greek and Roman worlds. Relying on ancient maritime transport containers, the amphorae, her research focuses on maritime trading and commercial relationships of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean area and hence economic history. Her studies also involve craftsmanship, ancient technology and eating habits in Antiquity. She participated in many international archaeological projects – surveys and excavations – especially in Turkey and Cyprus, but she is also currently collaborating with projects in Delos (Greece) and Pompeii (Italy).

Clare Davies joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2015 as the museum’s first curator of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. In the intervening years, she has strengthened the museum’s holdings of modern works from the region and organized two critically acclaimed special exhibitions. She is the co-editor of Siah Armajani: Follow This Line, Walker Art Center, exh. cat (2018), a co-author with Jeffrey Weiss of the systematic catalogue Robert Morris: Object Sculpture: 1960-65 (Yale UP, 2014), and co-author of a special edition of The Met Bulletin (2019) with Kim Benzel, Curator in Charge, Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, The Met. She was the recipient of an Arts Writers’ Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation (2011) and the inaugural Irmgard Coninx Prize, Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin (2014-2015). Her writings on modern and contemporary art have appeared in The Arab Studies Journal, ARTMargins, Tate Etc., artforum.com, Parkett, Bidoun, Frieze, and Triple Canopy, as well as anthologies including America: Films from Elsewhere (The Shoestring Publisher, 2019), Hamed Abdalla: Museum Without Walls (Zamân Books, 2018), I Am Built Inside You (Sternberg Press, 2017), and After Year Zero: Geographies of Collaboration (Haus Der Kunst, Berlin, 2016). Her current research focuses on Iranian art of the 1960s.

Dr. A. Ege Yildirim is an urban planner specializing in heritage conservation and management (Bachelor in City Planning and Minor in Architectural Conservation, METU 1998; MA in Conservation, University of York 1999; PhD in Social Environmental Sciences, Ankara University 2012). She has over 20 years of experience working in Turkey and internationally, focusing on cultural heritage policy, advocacy and governance; UNESCO World Heritage; and sustainable development. She previously worked as urban planner at KA-BA Architecture Ltd, Ankara (2000-06); as Conservation Coordinator at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage (2008-12); as Heritage Site Manager of the Historic Guild Town of Mudurnu, a UNESCO World Heritage candidate (2015-2020); and as Key Expert for Cultural Heritage in the EU-Turkey Anatolian Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Institute project, Gaziantep (2019). She was a Fulbright Scholar at Pratt Institute (New York, 2006-07) and J.M. Kaplan Senior Fellow for Archaeological Site Management at Koç University (Istanbul, 2013-14). Based in Istanbul since 2013, she is an independent consultant/ part-time instructor. Ege is currently the ICOMOS Focal Point for the Sustainable Development Goals, member of the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISoCaRP) and board member of ICOMOS Turkey and Europa Nostra Turkey.

As an archaeologist and art historian, Guilhem André is currently serving as Chief Curator at Louvre Abu Dhabi. In charge of the Medieval as well as Asian arts throughout the museum, he is particularly involved in creating the museum’s collection. Prior to this assignment, curator at the Agence France-Muséums, he has been responsible for establishing the scientific and cultural programming of Asian arts. Dr. Guilhem André began his career at the musée des Arts asiatiques-Guimet where he has been actively participating to numerous exhibitions in Europe, Asia and South-America. As the co-director for an archaeological mission in Mongolia, he coordinated a large research program that led him to edit several books and publish a number of articles and essays. In France, he created the chair of Art History of the Far East at the Institut Catholique de Paris where he taught for several years, and chaired also the programme of Far Eastern Arts at the Ecole du Louvre.

Nora is Head of Exhibitions at the Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai where she oversees the centre’s exhibition programme and where she has curated numerous solo and group exhibitions. Previous roles include Head of Programmes and Exhibitions at the Sursock Museum, Beirut, and Curator of Public Programmes at Tate, London. She has an MA in Anthropology and Cultural Politics from Goldsmiths College, London, where she also designed and taught the MA course ‘Critical Pedagogy in Contested Space’ at the Centre for Arts and Learning.

She has curated several solo and group exhibitions, including Phantom Limb (2019) at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, I will return and I will be millions, at Ashkal Alwan’s Homeworks Forum 8, Beirut (2019), and Let’s Talk About the Weather: Art and Ecology in a Time of Crisis (2016/2018) at the Sursock Museum, Beirut and the Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou; Maha Maamoun: The Law of Existence (2017), Hrair Sarkissian: Homesick (2017), Ali Cherri: A Taxonomy of Fallacies (2016) and Adelita Husni-Bey: A wave in the well (2016). She has commissioned works by Claire Pentecost, Marko Peljhan, Ahmet Ogüt, Ali Cherri, Adrian Lahoud, Joana Hadjitomas & Khalil Joreige, and Monira Al Qadiri.

She is co-editor of Elements for a World (Sursock Museum, Beirut), a series of 5 publications featuring specially commissioned texts and visual contributions responding to the current climate crisis through scientific, poetic, political, and speculative contributions, and The Future Citizen Guide (Tate, London), a series of contributions by artist and curators exploring changing notions of citizenship.

General Heritage Curator, she began her career at the Musée du Louvre in the Département des Antiquités orientales (Department of Near Eastern Antiquities).

A graduate of the École du Louvre in Art History and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in History (M2), she also studied at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations) (classical Arabic).

In 2001 she was appointed by the President of the Musée du Louvre, Henri Loyrette, to prefigure an Islamic arts department. Director of the Département des arts de l’Islam, she orchestrated its creation up to its inauguration by the President of the French Republic in 2012.

A specialist in cultural interactions between civilisations, she has published numerous studies on the theme of exchanges, and was appointed President of the Musée national des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet in 2013.

She is Chevalier of Arts and Letters and of the Ordre national du Mérite (National Order of Merit).

© MNAAG Paris / Photo: Didier Plowy

Jessica Morgan joined Dia Art Foundation as Director in January 2015 and was named Nathalie de Gunzburg Director in October 2017. At Dia, Morgan is responsible for strengthening and activating all parts of Dia’s multivalent program, including its pioneering Land art projects, site-specific commissions, and collections and programming across its constellation of sites. Since assuming directorship, Morgan has led a series of initiatives reaffirming and reinvigorating the nonprofit’s founding vision and principles. In 2018, Morgan announced a comprehensive, multi-year campaign, that includes the upgrade, revitalization, and ongoing stewardship of its key programmatic spaces and artist sites.

Prior to assuming her position at Dia, Morgan was The Daskalopoulos Curator, International Art, at Tate Modern in London from 2010 to 2014, and was Curator at Tate from 2002 to 2010. In addition to her work on exhibitions, Morgan played a key role in the growth of Tate’s collection—driving the development of the museum’s holdings of mid-century and emerging art from North America, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Morgan was previously Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Morgan organized the 2020 Verbier Art Summit and served as the artistic director of the 10th Gwangju Biennale in 2014. She has published extensively in Artforum and Parkett as well as other journals and scholarly publications.

Photo: Gabriela Herman

Thelma Golden is Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she began her career in 1987 before joining the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. She returned to the Studio Museum in 2000 as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs, and was named Director and Chief Curator in 2005. Golden was appointed to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House by President Obama in 2010, and in 2015 joined the Barack Obama Foundation’s Board of Directors. Golden was the recipient of the 2016 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. In 2018, Golden was awarded a J. Paul Getty Medal. She has received honorary degrees from Bard College, the City College of New York, Columbia University, and Smith College.

Reem Fadda is a curator and art historian. From 2010 to 2016, Fadda worked at the Guggenheim Museum as Associate Curator, Middle Eastern Art, Abu Dhabi Project. From 2005 to 2007, Fadda was Director of the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art (PACA), Ramallah and served as Academic Director for the International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah. She has curated many international exhibitions and biennials, including Jerusalem Lives (Tahya Al Quds), The Palestinian Museum, Birzeit (2017); Not New Now, 6th Marrakech Biennale, (2016) and the United Arab Emirates National Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale (2013). Fadda was awarded the eighth Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement in 2017 and is a 2019 Fellow of the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum. She currently works as Director of the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi.

Photo: Sofia Dadourian

Rose-Marie was previously Curator for the Archaeology at the Carnavalet Museum where she was in charge of the Prehistoric and Roman collection, the archaeological storage spaces, the Archaeological Crypt in the Ile de la Cite and the Catacombs of Paris; she co-conceived the museographical redevelopment following exhibitions that focused on the interpretations given to this archaeological site. In 2011, she joined the prefiguration team for establishing the public institution Paris Musées, especially to set up the organisational strategy for exhibitions, audience and communication. As Director of the Cognacq-Jay Museum and Curator for Decorative Arts, she curated a renewed display for the museum according to its identity related to the taste for the French 18th century and programming focused on the Enlightenment ideas and consumption practices. In 2014, she was also named in Apollo Magazine's 40 under 40 Europe as one of the most inspirational young people in the European art world. Her particular interest is the practices linked to cultural exchange and consumption, which has led her to work with international groups researching the transmission of material and social forms during the long 18th century. She joined Louvre Abu Dhabi as chief curator for Early modern Art in November 2018.

© Jean-Baptiste Woloch

Rose-Marie was previously Curator for the Archaeology at the Carnavalet Museum where she was in charge of the Prehistoric and Roman collection, the archaeological storage spaces, the Archaeological Crypt in the Ile de la Cite and the Catacombs of Paris; she co-conceived the museographical redevelopment following exhibitions that focused on the interpretations given to this archaeological site. In 2011, she joined the prefiguration team for establishing the public institution Paris Musées, especially to set up the organisational strategy for exhibitions, audience and communication. As Director of the Cognacq-Jay Museum and Curator for Decorative Arts, she curated a renewed display for the museum according to its identity related to the taste for the French 18th century and programming focused on the Enlightenment ideas and consumption practices. In 2014, she was also named in Apollo Magazine's 40 under 40 Europe as one of the most inspirational young people in the European art world. Her particular interest is the practices linked to cultural exchange and consumption, which has led her to work with international groups researching the transmission of material and social forms during the long 18th century. She joined Louvre Abu Dhabi as chief curator for Early modern Art in November 2018.

© Jean-Baptiste Woloch

Andrew McClellan holds degrees from University College London, University of East Anglia and the Courtauld Institute of Art (PhD) with a focus on early modern European art and the history of collecting. He is Professor of Art History at Tufts University, Boston, and has been involved in Tufts’ Museum Studies program for the past 25 years. Among his publications are several books about museums, including Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics and the Origins of the Museum in 18th-Century Paris; Art and its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium; The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao; The Art of Curating: Paul J. Sachs and the Museum Course at Harvard, and a forthcoming edited volume Revisiting History in Museums and Historic Sites. He is currently researching a history of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and a new book, The Art Museum Beyond Bilbao, co-authored with his wife, Christa Clarke, a curator of the arts of global Africa.

Maya Allison is Chief Curator at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), and founding Executive Director of The NYUAD Art Gallery, which opened in 2014. Previous posts include curatorial roles at Brown University, and the The RISD Museum. She also directed the annual international new media showcase Pixilerations, all in Providence, Rhode Island (USA). She holds degrees from Columbia University, Reed College, and was awarded a research fellowship at Brown University’s Center for Public Humanities.

Allison’s curatorial specializations intersect two areas: artistic communities, and installation art. Her most recent project, Speculative Landscapes (NYUAD Art Gallery, 2019) gathered four rising UAE-based artists who work in immersive, experimental installation. Her curatorial projects that included editing book-length publications include Wunderground: Providence, 1995 to the Present (Curatorial Assistant, RISD Museum, 2006), Slavs and Tatars: Mirrors for Princes (Curator, JRP Ringier/NYUAD Art Gallery, 2015), Diana Al-Hadid: Phantom Limb (Curator, Skira / NYUAD Art Gallery, 2016), But We Cannot See Them: Tracing a UAE Art Community, 1988-2008 (Lead Curator, NYUAD Art Gallery, 2017), and Zimoun (Curator, NYUAD Art Gallery, 2019). Outside the university, she has guest-curated a number of projects in the UAE, including Artists and the Cultural Foundation: The Early Years (Lead Curator, with book publication, Cultural Foundation Abu Dhabi, 2018), a 30-year survey of 18 UAE artists. She has recently been named Curator of the National Pavilion of the UAE to Venice for 2022.

Diana Campbell Betancourt is a Princeton educated American curator who has been working in South and Southeast Asia since 2010, primarily in India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. She is committed to fostering a transnational art world, and her plural and long-range vision addresses the concerns of underrepresented regions and artists alongside the more established in manifold forums.

Since 2013, she has served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation, Bangladesh and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, leading the critically acclaimed 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 editions. Campbell Betancourt has developed the Dhaka Art Summit into a leading research and exhibitions platform for art from South Asia, bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers from across South Asia through a largely commission based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh, also adding a scholarly element to the platform with a think tank connecting modern art histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia in collaboration with the Getty Foundation, Cornell University Center for Comparative Modernities, the Asia Art Archive, and the Samdani Art Foundation. In addition to her exhibitions making practice, Campbell Betancourt is responsible for developing the Samdani Art Foundation collection and drives its international collaborations ahead of opening the foundation’s permanent home, Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in Sylhet.

Concurrent to her work in Bangladesh from 2016-2018, Campbell Betancourt was also the Founding Artistic Director of Bellas Artes Projects in the Philippines, a non-profit international residency and exhibition programme with sites in Manila and Bataan, and curated Frieze Projects in London for the 2018 and 2019 editions of the fair. She chairs the board of the Mumbai Art Room and is an advisor to AFIELD, a global network of socially engaged artistic practices. Her writing has been published by Mousse, Frieze, Art in America, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) among others.

Photo: Pablo Bartholomew

Morad Montazami is an art historian, a publisher and a curator. After five years of service as « Middle Eastern/North African arts curator » at the Tate Modern, he is now director of the platform Zamân Books & Curating. ZBC is committed to transnational studies of Arab, Asian and African modernities, through books and exhibitions. He published several essays on artists such as Zineb Sedira, Walid Raad, Latif al-Ani, Bahman Mohassess, Michael Rakowitz, Hamed Abdalla, Jeremy Deller, Francis Alÿs, Éric Baudelaire... He was a curator for Volumes Fugitifs: Faouzi Laatiris et l’institut national des beaux-arts de Tétouan, Musée Mohamed VI d’art moderne et contemporain, Rabat, 2016; Bagdad Mon Amour, Institut des cultures d’Islam, Paris, 2018; New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School, The Mosaic Rooms, London; MACAAL, Marrakech; Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai, 2019-2020.

Janine Gaëlle Dieudji is currently Exhibitions Director at the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) in Marrakech. As a cultural activist and multilocal, at MACAAL she’s committed to building an inclusive museum, through the curation and production of exhibitions, as well as educational programs and artists residencies.

A native of France and Cameroon, Janine moved to Florence in 2011 and has gained a broad range of experience in arts and culture over the years. Past experiences include exhibitions and projects in collaboration with Le Murate Art District, American Academy in Rome and Villa Romana as Co-director of the cultural association BHMF (Black History Month Florence).

Photo: Saad Alami II

Maya El Khalil is an independent curator and art advisor, based between Saudi Arabia and the UK.

As founding director of Athr Gallery in Jeddah from 2009–2016, she pioneered exhibition approaches and cultural exchange in the absence of local public art institutions, making significant contributions to the establishment and development of a contemporary art scene in Saudi Arabia. For the last decade, she has continued to work locally, regionally and internationally with artists, collectors and institutions to develop the identity and ideas that have defined an art scene, building bridges between the Arab gulf and the world.

El Khalil is currently collaborating with international institutions with a specialism in progressive socially engaged exhibitions, developing multidisciplinary exhibitions that address the environmental and climate emergency, including forthcoming exhibition Take Me to the River, in collaboration with Goethe Institute and Prince Claus Fund. Other recent curatorial projects include The Clocks Are Striking Thirteen at Athr Gallery, Jeddah (2018); Amma Baad, Nasser Al Salem’s first international solo show at the Delfina Foundation, London (2019) and Casa Arabe, Madrid (2019). In 2020, she was appointed curator of the 7th edition of 21,39 Jeddah Arts under the title I Love You, Urgently, exploring urgent responses to the climate emergency.

She has been appointed to diverse panels and numerous advisory boards. She provides expert appraisal for museum collections in the Gulf and is advisor for international leading consultancies on visual art, museum and collection strategy.

El Khalil holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the American University of Beirut. She is enrolled in MA Art and Politics at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Joyoti Roy heads Strategy and Marketing at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Mumbai. She is interested in the social and civic role of cultural organizations and believes that arts institutions have the key responsibility to shape and reflect people's futures. She has been working in the field of museums, conservation and culture for over seventeen years. Up until 2017 she was heading the Outreach Department at the National Museum, Ministry of Culture, Government of India and has worked for both government and non-government institutions in India. Joyoti has been a Charles Wallace India Trust Awardee for the year 2008 for a fellowship programme in conservation of contemporary art at the Tate Gallery, London. She was the Clore Leadership Fellow for Culture representing India to the UK in 2017–18 and worked with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London for their upcoming museum and collection research facility in East London. She has coordinated several national and international exhibitions on art. Joyoti is also one of the founding members of Achi Association India, a not for profit initiative that works for the conservation of Himalayan Heritage. She is a trained art conservator with a specialization in conservation of mural paintings. She has worked on various sites and projects of the Association and facilitated several collaborations of the association with governmental and non-governmental organizations. She is a trained classical singer and a theatre person.

Katia Arfara is an Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, New York University Abu Dhabi. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History (Paris I University), a BA in Classical Studies and a BA and MA in Theater Studies (Athens University). Her essays on socially-engaged art, public works, and post-documentary performance have appeared in various journals and critical anthologies. Prof. Arfara is a Fulbright fellow, a DAAD and Clemens Heller scholar. In summer 2019, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University. She has lectured extensively in France and Greece. As the Theater and Dance Artistic Director and Curator of the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens (2009-2019), she has initiated and curated numerous artistic productions, discursive events and international festivals such as the Fast Forward, a site-specific festival at the intersection of art, science and civic practice. Prof. Arfara is the author of the book Théâtralités contemporaines (2011), the editor of the special issue “Scènes en transition-Balkans et Grèce” for Théâtre/Public (2016), and the co-editor of Intermedial Performance and Politics in the Public Sphere (2018).

Fatema Alhammadi is an Assistant Curator with two years of experience working alongside the collection and curatorial team of Zayed National Museum. She is specializes in social history and is responsible for conducting oral history to build content of Zayed National Museum galleries. Fatema is a powerful force in the workplace and uses her positive attitude and tireless energy to encourage others to work hard and succeed. Fatema is inspired daily by the vision of the founding Father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and she is doing her master's in innovation and change management to develop more creative museums in UAE.

Salwa Mikdadi is Associate Professor of the Practice of Art History at NYU Abu Dhabi (2013-). Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art of the Arab world, Arab art institutions, gender politics in art, and museums and society. Past positions include: Head of the Arts & Culture Program at the Emirates Foundation (2009-2012). She taught at Sorbonne-Paris Abu Dhabi in the MA Art History and Museology Program (2011-2014). Mikdadi was the Co-founder and Director of Cultural & Visual Arts Resource/ICWA, one of the first not-for-profit organizations dedicated to the study and exhibition of art of the Arab world (USA 1988-2006). She curated numerous exhibitions, including the first Palestinian Exhibition for the 53rd Venice Biennial, 2009, A Century in Flux: Highlights from the Barjeel Collection- Sharjah Art Museum (co-curator 2018), and Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World (USA 1994). She is the editor of several catalogs, books: Elias Zayat: Cities and Legends, Palestine c/o Venice (2009), Visual Reflections on Arabic Poetry, In/Visible: Arab American Artists, New Visions: Arab Contemporary Art of the 21st Century (co-editor) and wrote the reference guide on the history of twentieth-century art of West Asia, N. Africa, and Egypt for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline. Mikdadi is a founding member of AMCA.

Prior to joining Louvre Abu Dhabi’s curatorial team, Robert Kilroy was a faculty member at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi where he lectured on the Masters in History of Art and Museum Studies. A specialist in Modern and Contemporary art, Aesthetics and Visual Studies, he holds a Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin on the work of Marcel Duchamp and a research Masters on word/image relations in late 19th and early 20th century French painting. His current research focuses specifically on developing new methodological and conceptual approaches to the question of global art history. He has published widely on the triangulation of modern art, aesthetics and visual studies and the evolving role of the digital in contemporary art and culture. His most recent book, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: One Hundred Years Later was published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Anaïs Aguerre is founder and managing director of Culture Connect, a consultancy specialising in unlocking the collaborative and international potential of the cultural sector; harnessing its ability to build bridges between people, institutions and countries.

Prior to this, Anaïs worked for 15 years as a consultant and senior museum professional. She was notably Head of International Initiatives at the V&A (London) where she led the pioneer partnership between CMG and V&A resulting in the opening of the new V&A Gallery at the Design Society in Shenzhen, China, and worked at the British Museum on developing the Museum's international strategy and generating innovative income streams. Since 2009, Anaïs is also the general secretary of the Bizot Group and since 2015 the co-chair of the Network for Change (N4C). Anaïs is also on the board of the award-winning Akram Khan Dance Company and of the Bomb Factory Art Foundation, which promotes community engagement with contemporary art by merging artist studio spaces with public exhibition and learning spaces.

Anaïs graduated from the Institute d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and was awarded an MA in History of Art and Architecture at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2013.

Otone Doi is the research and operations manager at Culture Connect. She is also an evening event assistant at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. From 2014 to 2015, she worked on research for the Victoria and Albert Museum's headline exhibition 'You Say You Want A Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970' and acted as the course administrator for the V&A's international training courses, Curating Fashion and Dress and Creating Innovative Learning Programmes.

Otone was awarded a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History in 2012 and a Master of Studies in Classical Archaeology in 2013 at the University of Oxford, followed by a Master of Arts in Museum Studies in 2014 at University College London. She is currently completing her DPhil at the University of Oxford on the social impact of museums and the interpretation of ancient Greek pottery in museums across Britain.