Tufts University Art Galleries concludes the two-day program The Metabolic Museum: New Pathways for Collecting, with a panel discussion featuring Nicole Cherubini, artist; Kelli Morgan, Director of Curatorial Studies at Tufts University; Nicholas M. O’Donnell, Partner, Sullivan & Worcester LLP; and Kajette Solomon, Social Equity and Inclusion (SEI) Program Specialist at the RISD Museum, and moderated by Dina Deitsch, TUAG director and co-curator of the exhibition re:imagining collections.

As public calls for responsibility and transparency in museums have increased — specifically around historic collections — audiences are demanding greater acknowledgment of the colonial ideologies at the foundation of some institutions, questioning provenance and modes of acquisition, and urging for the return of cultural artifacts to their home nations. How have institutions, including Tufts University, responded? This event explores new pathways of understanding, displaying, researching, and returning historic collections as we consider the ethics and moral implications of housing and collecting works, especially cultural objects of deep ritual significance or those considered colonial plunder.

Presented as an extension of TUAG’s exhibition re:imagining collections, the event borrows its title from Day 1 keynote speaker  Clémentine Deliss’s 2020 publication “The Metabolic Museum,” in which the former director of Weltkulturen Museum (Frankfurt, Germany) argues for the living and changing nature of collections and new, radical engagements and interventions by artists into ethnographic collections.

Register through the event web page.