Report from the Conference of the Association of European Jewish Museums at the POLIN Museum
On the 19th of November the annual conference of the Association of European Jewish Museums (AEJM), entitled "Approaches to Authenticity: the Virtual vs. the Material vs. The Recreated", came to a close. This year's event was hosted by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute.
The conference was attended by 114 historians, curators, museum directors, educators and researchers from Jewish museums across Europe as well as by collectors and representatives of museologists from the United States and Israel.
The programme of the conference included, among other things, visiting the core exhibition of the POLIN Museum, meeting with a team of curators and the exhibition's program director, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, and a team of curators, a debate about the role of the museum in the context of Polish-Jewish relations, and numerous workshops concerning the collections and education.
For most of the participants, this was the first chance to see the core exhibition of the POLIN Museum and discuss its concept with the exposition's creators.
The Association of European Jewish Museums (AEJM) aims to promote cooperation and communication between Jewish Museums in Europe.
We invite you to watch the full accounts of the main speeches made at the conference:
- "Polish? Jewish? The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in the context of Polish-Jewish discourse", Prof. Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska and Konstanty Gebert
- "Original. Reconstruction. Virtual reality. Different concepts of museum authenticity", Dr. Erica Lehrer
The conference was made possible thanks to the support of the Koret Foundation, the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, the William K. Bowes, jr. Foundation, and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland
