2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the international master’s degree programme in Museology at the Reinwardt Academy. In order to celebrate this occasion, the Reinwardt Academy and the National Museum of Ethnology are planning an international symposium to take place at that museum in Leiden on Wednesday 4 June 2014. 

All Reinwardt master’s alumni, former and current students are invited to attend the symposium to reflect upon theory and practice and to share knowledge from their own unique international perspective. On invitation by course director Hester Dibbits professor-emeritus Peter van Mensch will deliver the keynote. His lecture will be followed by a panel discussion. In the afternoon, a series of roundtable discussions will take place.

Symposium
The symposium aims to strengthen the sense of community within the network of Reinwardt masters of Museology and to investigate the relationship between museological theory and practice with an emphasis on how the two interact. The event addresses the following issues:

• What is museological theory and how do various concepts, visions and models developed in different parts of the world relate to each other?
• How do museum professionals apply theoretical ideas into practice?
• How does practice in turn inform theory and vice versa?
• How do museum professionals develop a methodology wherein an interaction between theory and practice is embedded?

Proposals
You are all welcome to submit proposals for the afternoon discussion sessions until 15 March 2014. Please register now, and, if you want to, also submit your proposal to master-museology@ahk.nl on one sheet of A4, outlining your theme for discussion and how it relates to your personal experiences of theory and practice. The invitation and the programme of the meeting will be send later. A nominal fee of €25 will be charged for the day.

Location: National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden
Date: Wednesday 4 June 2014

Reinwardt Memorial Lecture
Attendees are also invited to attend the Reinwardt Memorial Lecture on Thursday 5 June by Professor Kavita Singh of Jawaharla Nehru University, New Delhi, (India).