Critical Dialogues
Interpreting Interpretation: Reimagining Exhibition Design through Collaboration, Constraint and Cultural Dialogue
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Peter Dixon
Exhibition design plays a vital role in how museums communicate, connect, and inspire. As both a designer and academic, the paper explores how collaborations between designers and cultural institutions shape visitor experience, interpretation, and engagement. Interpreting Interpretation investigates the evolving role of the designer in an increasingly complex global museum landscape. Drawing on over 30 years of international design experience and recent case studies—including work with the National Archives, National Science and Industry Museum’s, The Windermere Jetty Museum, and various civic art installations within the UK—this paper reflects on the practical and creative challenges of designing exhibitions under tight timelines, rising material costs, and the many competing priorities. From multidisciplinary collaboration to "happy accidents," the paper expands on how design can reframe interpretation and foster deeper audience connection. As museums around the world increasingly prioritise sustainability, visitor participation, and the inclusive representation of histories and identities, the role of design becomes a critical mediator between institutional vision and public expectation. Rather than prescriptive answers, this session offers a reflective, practice-based inquiry into how designers and institutions can co-create compelling, inclusive, and relevant exhibitions, where interpretation becomes not only a storytelling device but also a space for dialogue and social resonance.
En Attendant Ars Aevi - Navigating Absence, Presence, and Cultural Resilience toward an Open-air Urban Museum
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Senka Ibrisimbegovic, Nermina Zagora
This paper explores how contemporary art and culture can serve as tools of resilience in post-conflict and transitional societies, using the long-term evolution of Ars Aevi, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo, as a case study. Born during the siege of Sarajevo (1992–1995) as a collective, international act of cultural resistance, Ars Aevi brought together donated works from globally renowned artists in a gesture of solidarity and peace. Since its arrival in Sarajevo in 1999, the collection has remained without a permanent museum building, existing instead in a prolonged state of “limbo”—migrating between temporary spaces: from the ice rink of Skenderija’s cultural and sports center, to the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to the Youth Center, and currently housed in Sarajevo City Hall. Despite this nomadic trajectory, Ars Aevi continues to carry symbolic and institutional weight. This paper proposes a vision for its next phase: activating Sarajevo’s public spaces through an open-air museum model. By placing selected artworks from the collection in key urban locations, the city itself becomes a living exhibition—embedding contemporary art into daily civic life before the museum’s final home, designed by Renzo Piano, is constructed. The research critically examines this Open-air Urban Museum model as a creative response to spatial and political uncertainty, grounded in theories of resilience, civic participation, and cultural democratization. Using spatial analysis, archives, and visual mapping, the study presents Ars Aevi as a prototype of resistance that continues to unfold in public space, while waiting the permanent home for collection.
An Ecosystem for Fashion Repositories: European Fashion Heritage Association and Its Role in Aggregating, Connecting, Activating, and Communicating Fashion Heritages
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carolina Francesca Maria Davalli
Founded in 2014 as a result of a project co-funded by the European Commission, EFHA - European Fashion Heritage Association is an international network of fashion GLAMs. It also serves as the official fashion thematic aggregator for the European cultural heritage digital platform Europeana. The Association gathers more than 50 fashion archives and cultural organisations, public and private, across 15 European countries. Its core mission is to provide open access to its partners’ collections, which include historical garments and accessories, contemporary fashion, catwalk photography, patterns, drawings, sketches, magazines, and catalogues. EFHA is active in the wider field of European digital cultural heritage, focusing on open access, co-creation, the reuse of resources, and the valorisation of both tangible and intangible fashion heritage. The Association is also involved in a number of European collaborative projects that explore participation, co-creation, and innovative approaches to business modelling within the cultural heritage sector. This paper critically examines the Association’s strategies and projects, assessing how they align with and advance its mission of inspiring and facilitating the aggregation, connection, activation, and communication of European fashion heritages. Key initiatives include the expansion of its digital repository, the dissemination of best practices in digitisation, curation, and archiving, the promotion of fashion research through international conferences, and the organisation of workshops on metadata enrichment and data quality. Through its efforts and the active participation of the stakeholders and their communities, EFHA functions as an inclusive ecosystem for the support, preservation, and enhancement of diverse and fashion repositories, resources, and heritages.
