The future is now​

THE FUTURE IS NOW

EVOLVING MUSEUM STRATEGY, PROGRAMMING & COMMUNICATION
​ATHENS, 4 DEC 2014
THESSALONIKI, 5 DEC 2014
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Museums and other cultural institutions are often located in august buildings that imply the ability to shrug off any pressure to change. But that’s an illusion: they are the product of social and economic forces and remain subject to the shifts in those forces.

Take technology. A few years ago, when we held the first of these conferences, the Tate and the Met had major websites, but their presence in social media was negligible. Now both are leaders in audience engagement. Then there’s money. Museums cost. The Metropolitan and Tate host their collections in multiple branches and operate on multimillion dollar budgets. Where does the money come from and where does it go? Strategy is what gives direction in the squall. How does a museum examine its purpose, rethink its core programming, and renew its audience? How should a museum use tech to engage with the audience without losing sight of its original vision? How do people running museums decide what is meaningful growth, and what’s growth for growth’s sake? At the fourth annual Museum Conference, museum professionals, independent curators, and artists from Greece, the UK and the U.S. will discuss about making the museum of the future.

SPEAKERS

Ath / Thess
Cynthia Round
Senior Vice President of Marketing and External Relations, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
U.S.A
Ath / Thess
Susan Sellers
Head of Design,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
U.S.A
Ath
Sam Thorne
Artistic Director,
Tate St Ives
UK
SCHEDULE ATHENS
SCHEDULE THESSALONIKI
SPEAKER'S VIDEO

GALLERY

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Cynthia Round

Senior Vice President of Marketing
and External Relations,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
U.S.A.

Cynthia Round is Senior Vice President of Marketing and External Relations for The Metropolitan Museum of Art where she is responsible for global brand stewardship, marketing, and communications.
Prior to joining the Met, Cynthia oversaw brand strategy and marketing for United Way Worldwide, the world’s largest nonprofit which raises $5 billion annually across 40 countries. She began her career in brand management at the Procter & Gamble Company in the United States and Italy. She later worked at Ogilvy Worldwide as Senior Partner and Executive Group Director, building and renovating domestic and global brands in categories ranging from packaged goods and high tech to fashion and entertainment.
Cynthia guest-lectures on global branding and social marketing at college campuses across the USA, most recently Yale, Columbia, NYU, and Georgetown. Her volunteer work includes the board of the Advertising Educational Foundation. She is past-chair of the board for Soho Rep Theatre and the 2009 American Marketing Association Non-Profit Conference.

Susan Sellers

Head of Design
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
U.S.A.

Susan Sellers is Head of Design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she oversees all aspects of design in the Museum from brand identity and visitor experience to exhibition. Sellers’ work spans the urban, cultural and commercial, engaging almost every medium from print to exhibition, architecture and information systems, screen-based media and environments. At the center of Sellers’ practice is a passion for culture and cities and a commitment to the enrichment of public space through design. Her clients have included the Guggenheim, the Brooklyn Museum, Harvard Art Museums, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the American Academy in Rome, the Fondazione Prada, Novartis, Nike, MTV, Knoll, Vitra among many others.
She has taught and lectured widely, serving as visiting critic at many institutions including the Rhode Island School of Design, Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Harvard Graduate School of Design, SCI-ARC and the Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan. Currently, she sits on the steering committee for NYCXDesign, a yearly event organized to promote the cultivation and visibility of New York design industries globally. She has held positions in several studios including Total Design and UNA in Amsterdam. Ms. Sellers is a founding partner at the global design studio 2×4 and Senior Critic in Graphic Design at Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut.

Sam Thorne

Artistic Director,
Tate St Ives
UK

Sam Thorne is Artistic Director of Tate St Ives, where he has been in position since March 2014. He is a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art, London, and a contributing editor at frieze magazine.
In 2012, he co-founded Open School East, an independent study programme housed in a former public library in East London, which provides free studios and tuition to a number of associate artists. Guest tutors have included Ed Atkins, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, T.J. Demos, Mark Fisher, Maria Lind, Sally Tallant and Ahmet Ogut.
Sam has taught and lectured widely on subjects including exhibition histories, activism, education and art criticism at a number of universities, including Oxford, York, the Architectural Association and UCL.
He has also contributed to publications including Bidoun, Kaleidoscope and Picpus, and written numerous catalogue essays on artists including Wolfgang Tillmans, Rivane Neuenschwander and Tal R. Sam has organised a number of international symposia, lectures and music programmes, including Frieze Talks in New York (2013), and has chaired and convened talks at Tate Modern, the ICA and the Serpentine. ​