Thursday 14th May 2026, 4pm, The Conservatory, Birkbeck, Malet Street, London
The International Council for Museums defines museums as ‘permanent institutions’, as does the UK Museums Association. This seminar critically addresses the aspiration to permanence, its value, and its limits. We ask what would museums be if not permanent?
Speakers:
Bruno Brulon Soares ‘Permanence and Precarity’
Fiona Candlin ‘At Stake in Permanence’
Chair: Bethany Rex
Tickets are free but please a book a place
Bethany Rex, Research Fellow, Centre for Cultural & Media Policy Studies, University of Warwick. Following doctoral work on local government and museum asset transfer, Bethany has researched museum closures, decision-making in local government and how the commercialisation of museums is being experienced by museum staff. She is currently working on a book about museum closures (MUP, 2028).
Bruno Brulon Soares, Reader in Museum and Heritage Studies in the School of Art History, University of St Andrews. Between 2020 and 2022, Bruno was co-Chair of the Standing Committee for the Museum Definition (ICOM Define) and coordinated the global participatory project that led to the approval of a new museum definition adopted by the International Council of Museums in August 2022. He is the author of The Anticolonial Museum (Routledge 2024) and co-author of The Museum Definition Handbook (ICOM, 2025) with Lauran Bonilla-Merchav.
Fiona Candlin, Professor of Museology. School of Historical Studies, Birkbeck, University of London. Fiona is Director of the Mapping Museums Lab, a multi-disciplinary research group that has documented and analysed the history and development of the UK museum sector since 1960. Their most recent project addresses closure. She is author of Art, Museums and Touch (MUP 2009); Micromuseology (Bloomsbury 2015); Stories from Small Museums (MUP 2022) and many articles, chapters, and reports. She has almost finished a new book provisionally called Closed Museums and After.