Re:assemblages Symposium (Lagos, 4-5 Nov 25)

Alliance Française de Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, Nov 4–05, 2025
Deadline: Aug 15, 2025

Guest Artists Space Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation

Provocation: What does it mean to think with African and Afro-diasporic art archives as living, contested, and future-shaping spaces?

The 20th century can be read as a formative ecotonal space—an unsettled, generative borderland where networks fractured and reformed, collaborations ignited, and tensions gave way to new modes of relation. Within this compressed terrain, distinct ecologies of African and Afro-diasporic thought and practice took shape, producing postcolonial libraries, and archives that carried with them emergent aesthetic and epistemic registers—unfinished, insurgent, and alive with possibility.

Marking the inaugural symposium of the Re:assemblages programme, this two-day gathering brings together the African Arts Libraries (AAL) Lab and Affiliates Network, archivists, curators, scholars, artists, librarians, and wider audiences to contemplate how postcolonial African and Afro-diasporic art archives and libraries act as ecotonal sites, their everyday lives, and futures.

The Re:assemblages Symposium invites inquiry into the ecologies of African and Afro-diasporic art libraries and archives energised by the radical potential of The Short Century, a temporal arc spanning 1945 to 1994 that centers Africa in postwar decolonisation, new diasporic formations, and the modernist movement of the 20th century. The symposium asks: 
– What forms of care, friction, and futurity emerge in the gaps, silences, and transitional zones of the postcolonial archive and library? 
– How might we read these spaces not as sealed enclosures, but as ecotonal formations? 
– How can we cultivate publishing ecologies within them that disrupt extractive knowledge regimes and nurture situated ways of learning?

Symposium Themes and Provocations 
The symposium is framed by the conceptual currents of Re:assemblages 2025–26—Ecotones, Annotations, The Living Archive, and The Short Century, each offering methods to inhabit postcolonial art archives and libraries, their gaps, inventories, silences, and thresholds.

Ecotones are transitional zones—spaces between distinct ecosystems, knowledge systems, and epistemologies. Deriving from the Greek tonos (tension) and eco (home), Ecotones asks: 
– What does it mean to inhabit the boundary, the in-between? 
– What knowledge is generated at points of contact, friction, and leakage? 
– How can archives, spaces shaped by colonial histories, diasporic flows, and post-independence reimaginings be read as ecotones? 
– How might ecotonal approaches help surface marginalized voices, and foster new reading ecologies, and ecotonal practices of publishing?

Annotations takes as its point of departure the marginalia, footnotes, redactions, and fragments that often surround, rather than centre, dominant historical narratives. Here, annotation is not merely a supplement, but a method. Influenced by the speculative rigour of Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulation and John Keene’s poetic logic, this theme embraces annotation as a radical archival gesture: a way of writing beside, between, or against the grain. Initially conceived to activate the archives of pan-African festivals FESMAN, Zaire ’74, PANAF, FESTAC ’77, Annotations draws on various frames to ask: 
– How can annotation operate as a feminist, intertextual, and multisensory method? 
– What does it mean to annotate across silences, across generations, across space? 
– How can annotation serve as an act of resistance, a tool of memory, and a speculative strategy for working across archives—especially those that are fragile, informal, or deliberately incomplete?

The Living Archive challenges static, institutional models by emphasizing process, activation, and embodied memory. Here, the archive is not simply a place of preservation and linear histories, but a site of performance, encounter, and transformation. Artists and cultural workers draw from and contribute to archives in ways that are iterative, unstable, and alive. The Living Archive draws on artistic-led methods to ask: 
– How have artists inhabited museum collections, libraries, and archives? 
– What new languages and forms emerge when archives are accessed through gesture, voice, kinship, or editorial experimentation? 
– What gestures and practices are required to keep an archive alive?

(The Short Century: Symposium contributions under this theme will be presented by US based fellows of The Short Century Intensive, a research fellowship hosted by G.A.S. Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation, with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.)

Submission Guidelines 
We welcome proposals responding to the themes, Ecotones, The Living Archive, and Annotations, especially those that go beyond traditional academic formats. Contributions may take the form of talks and panels, performances or readings, listening sessions or screenings, workshops or roundtables, or collaborative, and intermedia presentations.

Please submit the following materials via the Application Form (https://forms.zohopublic.eu/yinkashonibarefoundation/form/CallForPapersReassemblagesSymposium202526/formperma/IxSHtFlylwPAXokwh8jGlIglobYZUCY2EVFpg9rH3yY) by 15 August 2025: 
– Abstract (300–500 words): Include a clear title. Indicate the theme you are responding to (Ecotones, The Living Archive, or Annotations). Outline the form and content of your contribution. 
– Supporting Material (3-5 items): Relevant images, video/audio samples, or links connected to 
your abstract. Please include captions and brief descriptions. 
– Biography (max. 250 words) 
– Website (and or links to professional work) 
– Curriculum Vitae – PDF, 3 pages maximum.

Selected participants will be notified in the first week of September. Selection will be made by our Advisory Committee, with preliminary shortlisting conducted by the Planning Committee.

Contact and FAQs 
For questions and inquiries, please contact: library@guestartistsspace.com.

We will offer travel and accommodation grants for five Africa-based participants. While we cannot cover travel and accommodation for other contributors, we will provide invitation letters to assist with funding and visa applications.

The symposium is scheduled to coincide with Lagos Art Week and ART X Lagos, a city-wide platform for contemporary art from Lagos and beyond, encompassing exhibition openings, art fairs, public programmes, and related cultural events.

About 
Re:assemblages is a roaming body and multi-year programme designed to foster experimentation and collaboration within African art libraries. In 2025–26, its second chapter opens with a provocation: What does it mean to think with African and Afro-diasporic art archives as living, contested, and future-shaping spaces? The programme forges vital connections between artists, publishers, and research institutions in Africa, while responding to the urgent need for a global forum to advance dialogue around archives that remain under-resourced, dispersed, and shaped by enduring colonial legacies that continue to determine their access, preservation, and visibility.

The programme is curated by Naima Hassan and coordinated by Samantha Russell, with contributions from Maryam Kazeem, Ann Marie Peña, and Jonn Gale, and funding from the Terra Foundation of American Art. 

For further details, view the concept note here (https://www.yinkashonibarefoundation.com/Portals/0/Reassemblages%202025-26%20Programme%20Concept.pdf). Previous outcomes of the 2024 edition can be found here (https://www.guestartistsspace.com/Reassemblages).

Organised by Guest Artists Space Foundation & Yinka Shonibare Foundation.

Advisory Committee
Dr. Beatrix Gassmann de Sousa, Natasha Ginwala, Dr. Rangoato Hlasane, Patrick Mudekereza, Serubiri Moses, and Dr. Oluwatoyin Zainab Sogbesan.

Planning Committee
Moni Aisida, Jonn Gale, Naima Hassan, Belinda Holden, Maryam Kazeem, Siti Osman, Samantha Russell, and Ann Marie Peña.

Re:assemblages 2025–26 is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and Afreximbank under the auspices of the Afreximbank Art Program.

Contact Information

Naima Hassan

Re:assemblages Curator

Associate Curator and Archivist

G.A.S. Library and Picton Archive

Contact Email

library@guestartistsspace.com

URL: https://www.guestartistsspace.com/News/call-for-papers-reassemblages-symposium-2025

Lessing’s Materials/Materialities

Lessing Society Sponsored Panel 

ASECS Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, April 9-11, 2026 

In May 1770, Lessing assumed the office of librarian at the ducal library at Wolfenbüttel, known today as the Herzog August Bibliothek, a position he held until his death in 1781. As librarian, he was responsible for reorganizing the library’s holdings, which consisted of over 100,000 volumes, and for expanding the library’s collection on a very limited budget, which he accomplished by selling off or exchanging duplicates (Doublettentausch). Although born of necessity, this concern with the materiality and exchange value of the book mirrors the frequency with which material goods and objects are foregrounded in Lessing’s oeuvre, including rings (Minna von Barnhelm, Nathan der Weise), letters (Miß Sara Sampson), textiles (Nathan der Weise), and paintings and sculptures (Emilia Galotti, Laokoön). Today, our understanding of Lessing’s biography and his cultural significance continues to be shaped by the materiality of objects displayed in archives and collections in Wolfenbüttel, Kamenz, and beyond. In both Lessing’s oeuvre and in the collections and archives that frame his legacy, the (in)authenticity of an object’s provenance is central to its interpretation – most notably in the Ring Parable, in which the symbolic overdetermination of the three rings is linked to their exchangeability. 

This panel draws attention to the role of material objects and materiality in Lessing’s life, works and reception. Inquiries could address topics such as:

• Representations of material objects, collections, and collectors in Lessing’s works (e.g., the rings in Nathan der Weise, the Laokoön sculpture, the painting of Emilia Galotti)
• Library and museum collections connected with Lessing, such as the Herzog August Bibliothek, the Lessinghaus Wolfenbüttel, and the Lessing-Museum Kamenz
• The materiality of books, periodicals, and correspondence (e.g., paper, marginalia, writing utensils, ephemera)
• Inventories and the (re)classifying of objects, e.g., Lessing’s reorganization of the library in Wolfenbüttel 
• Dupes, frauds, and fakes; exchanges and exchangeability (e.g., the Doublettentausch, the three rings in the Ring Parable) 
• Lessing’s involvement with theater and its material objects (props, costumes, actors’ debts)
• Money, gambling, and lottery tickets 
• Correspondences and collections of letters 
• Materiality and the spirit/matter distinction in Lessing’s theological writings 

Please send a 250-word abstract and a short CV to Mary Helen Dupree (mhd33@georgetown.edu) and Francien Markx (fmarkx@gmu.edu) by September 15, 2025. 

Redaktion: Constanze Baum – Lukas Büsse – Mark-Georg Dehrmann – Nils Gelker – Markus Malo – Alexander Nebrig – Johannes Schmidt

Diese Ankündigung wurde von H-GERMANISTIK [Lukas Büsse] betreut – editorial-germanistik@mail.h-net.msu.edu

Contact Information

Mary Helen Dupree, mhd33@georgetown.edu

Francien Markx, fmarkx@gmu.edu

Contact Email

mhd33@georgetown.edu

We are delighted to invite papers for the international workshop ‘Museums in Motion: New Frontiers in Chinese Museum Studies’, to be held in person and online at the University of Siena on 13-14 November 2025. 

Studying Chinese museums is both an intriguing and rewarding pursuit, offering a valuable perspective on the histories and cultures of China and its unprecedented transformations over the past three decades. These institutions house an extraordinary wealth of historical, artistic, and cultural artefacts, providing deep insight into China’s long and complex past, as well as its multilayered interactions with the world today. From ancient bronzes and calligraphy to contemporary art and political exhibitions, museums in China serve as dynamic spaces where history is preserved, interpreted, and debated. They shape narratives, influence national and local identities, and even serve political functions. The way history and culture are presented—what is emphasized, omitted, or reframed—offers a revealing glimpse into China’s evolving relationship with its past and present.

At the same time, questions of accessibility and representation remain central. While major state-run museums, such as the National Museum of China, present grand, state-approved narratives, smaller independent museums sometimes offer alternative perspectives, occasionally challenging official histories. This raises critical discussions about who controls historical narratives and how they are curated. Beyond their role as cultural and historical institutions, Chinese museums are at the forefront of technological and curatorial innovation. Digital exhibitions, AI-driven curation, and new approaches to audience engagement are transforming how visitors experience history and culture. But what does this mean for museum studies as a field? Are existing theories and methodologies sufficient to analyze these developments, or do we need new frameworks to understand this evolving landscape?

Furthermore, museums play an increasingly significant role in China’s modern cultural and economic strategies. The country has invested heavily in building and modernizing these institutions, signalling both a commitment to preserving heritage, and an effort to enhance cultural tourism internally and China’s cultural influences externally. Yet, this also raises fundamental questions: Are museums primarily spaces for education, instruments of soft power, or engines of commercial gain? How do they compare to museums in other parts of the world? Ultimately, studying Chinese museums is not just about appreciating artefacts—it is about understanding the intersections of history, culture, politics and society. Museums are not just neutral spaces; they actively participate in shaping national identity and public memory.

Objectives

Given China’s rapid cultural, political, and technological transformations, this workshop aims to explore the current landscape of Chinese museum studies. It seeks to foster international collaboration by bringing together scholars, curators, policymakers, and practitioners from diverse perspectives. The event will serve as a unique forum for critical dialogue, interdisciplinary exchange, and the rethinking of future directions in Chinese museum studies. 

We aim to collect contributions to publish an edited volume with a leading publisher in the field in 2026/2027.

Scope 

We encourage interdisciplinary approaches and welcome submissions in English that engage with a broad range of research topics, projects, and case studies, from practitioners, policymakers, and scholars from different perspectives and disciplines, including but not limited to: Archaeology; Art and Art History; Anthropological and Ethnographic Studies; Sociological Perspectives; Political Science and International Relations; Economic and Business Approaches; Media and Communication Studies; Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices; Conservation and Heritage Management; Exhibition Design and Interpretation; Education and Pedagogical Approaches; Gender and Feminist Studies; Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies; Science and Technology Studies; and Philosophical and Ethical Considerations.

Key questions the workshop seeks to address include (but are not limited to):

• How are museums in China shaping and reshaping historical narratives?
• What role do digital technologies play in Chinese museums?
• How do Chinese museums engage with international audiences and collaborate with global institutions?
• What challenges do museums face in terms of funding, curation, and public engagement?
• How do museums navigate issues of decolonization, repatriation, and contested heritage?
• What role do museums play in fostering community engagement, especially among local and ethnic minority groups?
• How do privately funded museums contribute to or challenge dominant narratives?
• How do museums address environmental sustainability and heritage conservation?
• What ethical concerns arise with AI, VR, and big data in museum curation?
• How are gender, diversity, and marginal voices represented in Chinese museums?
• What role do Chinese museums play in international cultural diplomacy and soft power?
• How do Chinese exhibitions and collections abroad shape global perceptions of Chinese culture?
• What are the dynamics of collaboration between Chinese and foreign museums and how do these influence museum practices globally?
• New methods and approaches to museum studies 
• Historical perspective on museum development in China 
• Museum development in Greater China and among Chinese diasporas 

Dates: 13–14 November 2025
Format: Hybrid (Online & In-Person)

Hosting University: University of Siena (Department of Philology and Literary Criticism) – Arezzo Campus
Venue: Logge del Grano Hall, Piazzetta Logge del Grano 5, 52100 Arezzo, Italy

Presentation Format: Papers should not exceed 20 minutes, followed by a 5-minute discussion.

Submission Guidelines: Please send an abstract (250 words)along with a bio (max. 100 words, detailing affiliation, career stage and disciplinary background).

Important Dates: 

• Submission Deadline: 31 May 2025
• Notification of Acceptance: 31 July 2025
• Program Draft: 30 September 2025

Fee: Attendance at the workshop is free. Participants attending the in-person session shall cover their own travel and accommodation.

Proposal Submission: Please send proposals in a single email to all organizers at the following addresses:

Ornella De Nigris: ornella.denigris@unisi.it|Cangbai Wang: C.Wang6@westminster.ac.uk |Sofia Bollo: sofia.bollo@uzh.ch

France

ANNUAL ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM OF THE HISTORY COMMISSION OF THE FRENCH CARTOGRAPHY COMMITTEE

Friday 14th November 2025

INHA (Paris) – Salle Vasari

The History Commission of the CFC is organising a study day on ‘Cartographic exhibitions’ on 14 November 2025 at the Institut national d’histoire de l’Art (INHA) in Paris.

This one-day symposium is a continuation of the previous meetings on ‘Art and Cartography’ (2023) and ‘Cartography and Cinema’ (2024), in which cartography and its history were examined from the angle of their presence in modern and contemporary visual cultures. The aim of this new day is to consider the various aspects of the encounter between cartography and the general public.

Maps have long been exhibited, more or less permanently, in the galleries of major palaces and public buildings. Think, for example, of the Vatican Map Gallery or the world map room in the Farnese Palace in Caprarola. But it is not to these perennial cartographic settings, which are already well known, that this Study Day aims to focus its analysis, but rather on temporary installations.

Since the nineteenth century, cartography has been the focus of a great many temporary exhibitions, both specialist and more general. Like works of art or scientific objects, maps, globes, models, relief maps and observation instruments were considered worthy of public interest. Take, for example, the enthusiastic response to the exhibition entitled ‘Cartes et figures de la Terre’ [Maps and Figures of the Earth], presented at the Centre Pompidou in 1980. Exhibitions devoted to the history of cartography, or certain aspects of it, are regularly held at scientific gatherings (geography congresses or learned societies), at international fairs and, of course, in libraries, museums and archive centres.

We need to look at these cartographic exhibitions from a number of angles: 

– What were the projects, motivations and objectives of the designers of these exhibitions?

– What were the scientific, artistic and political contexts in which these exhibitions were organised?

– What cartographic documents were chosen? According to what criteria? What were their aims?

– What was the chosen scenography? How have these choices evolved over the years? Are there any links, or even analogies, with the history of art exhibitions?

– How many people attended the exhibition? What type of audience, if any? How did the press react to the exhibitions?

Contributions may address all or only some of these questions.

Practical details

Proposals for papers (approximately 1500 characters), accompanied by a short bio-bibliography, should be sent before 10 May 2025 to the following address: catherine.hofmann@bnf.fr.

The selection committee will meet in mid-June and will announce the results of the call for papers in early July.

The papers selected will be published in an issue of the journal of the French Cartography Committee, Cartes & Géomatique, in 2026.

Contact Information

Catherine Hofmann, map curator at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris)

Jean-Marc Besse, head researcher at CNRS and EHESS

Contact Email

catherine.hofmann@bnf.fr

URL

https://cartogallica.hypotheses.org/

CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR ARTEFACTS 30, CARE AND REPAIR

With pleasure, Norsk Teknisk Museum (the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology) announces that the next and 30th meeting of ARTEFACTS will be held in Oslo, Norway, 12–14 October 2025.

ARTEFACTS is an international network of academic and museum-based scholars of science, technology, and medicine, who share the goal of promoting the use of objects in research. The consortium was established in 1996 and since then has held annual conferences examining the role of artefacts and collections in the making of science and technology and related areas. See https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/our-work/research-public-history/artefacts-consortium.

The theme of the 2025 meeting is CARE AND REPAIR, and we encourage proposals (see formats below) concerning how erosion, breakdown, and maintenance, instead of progress and innovation, can be starting points for research. What are the limits of our fragile world, and what work does caring do? We characterize ‘care and repair’ broadly, encompassing objects, people, and environments, but all proposals should have a focus on the material culture of science, technology, and/or medicine.

In keeping with the theme, we especially encourage proposals from museum conservators, as well as those who care for museum communities. These could potentially be joint submissions with other museum practitioners and scholars. ARTEFACTS conferences are friendly and informal meetings with the character of workshops. There is plenty of time for open discussion and networking.

Examples might include, but are not limited to:

• Conservation and restoration of technoscientific heritage; “stubborn” objects, those which require persistent care and repair; challenges while taking care of technoscientific collections… 
• Working with communities on technoscientific heritage; forgotten stories of care and repair; amateurs and enthusiasts, the maker movement, and do-it-yourself (DIY) culture…
• The sustainability of technoscientific heritage; practices of repair leading towards more sustainability; making things last; waste and reuse; the afterlives of technoscientific heritage…
• Historical perspectives on technology and repair; the shaping of technology through practices of repair; how repair practices have changed over time; lost expertise / knowledge / skills; the lifespans and persistence of technology; technology’s manifold temporalities…
• Care and the medical humanities; care versus repair, with regard to hierarchies of expertise in healthcare; caregiving and the difficulties of providing and receiving care; ethical dimensions of care and maintenance; how caregiving has changed over time…

Please remember that the focus of presentations should be on artefacts.

This time, ARTEFACTS is experimenting with two tracks for submissions: (1) works to be considered for publication (a pre-circulated paper and a longer presentation based on the paper) and (2) works-in-progress (shorter presentations without a paper). Abstracts for track 1 should be 500-1000 words; abstracts for track 2 should be 200-300 words. They should be accompanied by a 75-word author biography and sent to artefacts@tekniskmuseum.no by 15 May 2025. We aim to notify accepted participants by 5 June 2025.

Registration will open formally when the program is announced in June, but in the meantime informal queries should be directed to artefacts@tekniskmuseum.no.