Building Futures from Memory: Museums and Memorial Sites as Agents
ONLINE AND ON-SITE IN BERLIN AND KIGALI, AND AT 26 RESIDENCY LOCATIONS
How can memory be activated rather than simply preserved? In what ways can museums and memorial sites act as agents of dialogue, responsibility, repair, and transformation? And how might institutions engage with complex, often contested pasts while contributing to more just and equitable futures? Central to this year's focus is an understanding of memory as a dynamic force—one that shapes not only how societies remember, but also how they act in the present and imagine what lies ahead.
Within this framework, leadership is understood as a critical, reflective, and transformative practice. TheMuseumsLab invites you to reconsider how leadership is imagined and enacted within cultural institutions, particularly in relation to existing hierarchies, colonial legacies, and ongoing questions of accountability. Rather than reinforcing traditional top-down models, the programme emphasizes shared responsibility, ethical commitment, and community-oriented governance as essential dimensions of institutional practice today.
Through dialogue with cultural leaders working across diverse geographic, political, and professional contexts, you are encouraged to reflect on what museums might become if their internal architecture was built differently: Who do museums address? Who holds decision-making power? And how can institutions remain accountable to the communities whose histories they collect, interpret, and present? Alternative approaches—including co-leadership models, community governance frameworks, activist and civic initiatives, and memorial institutions—offer important starting points for reimagining museums as sites of participation, care, and social transformation.
Updates & Programme Insights
TheMuseumsLab Forum 2026: A day of reconnection, exchange, and dialogue
The Forum 2026 gathered museum and heritage professionals from Africa and Europe to exchange ideas on the evolving role of museums and memorial sites worldwide.
Reflecting on Module 2: Notes from Berlin as a Landscape of Memory
In his reflection on Module 2, TheMuseumsLab Co-Curator Matthew Watts looks back on a week shaped by questions of memory, power, and imagining alternatives.…
What if a museum could breathe? An essay on imagining museums of the future through memory, imagination, and critical futures thinking by Ouassima Laabich.
In 2026, four Co-Curators based at an African and a European museum collaborate to develop the content of the programme. The African curators, Jean de la Croix Mbarubukeye and Thomas Cadeau Ngwabije, are based at the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy (RCHA). The European curators, Gita Herrmann and Matthew Watts, are part of TheMuseumsLab Team at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN). They collaborate closely with stakeholders from the museum, heritage, and cultural sectors within their respective regions.
Curatorial Team
Meet this year's curators and learn more about their backgrounds and expertise.
