Museum Utopias: Navigating the Imaginary, Ideal and Possible Museum A Two Day Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Symposium at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester Tuesday 27th and Wednesday 28th March 2012 In everyday life, the chance to dream, to imagine, to explore the idea of the museum is limited, leaving many museums reacting to change, rather than being able to think about how the museum could be. This Symposium will give museum researchers, students and practitioners the opportunity to consider the changes that are taking place in the world and how museums might respond to them, using the idea of Utopia as a place for dreaming as well as thinking practically about how these challenges might be addressed. Despite the impossibility of building Utopia, we arguably retain our need for what Barbara Kirshenblatt- Gimblett (2004) has called ‘the utopian imagination’. Utopia can inspire us to challenge the status quo, and to transform our world for the better. From temples of the Muses dedicated to the arts to today’s democratic forums of debate and consumption, the concept and the realization of the museum have changed dramatically during its long and varied history. Stepping into the Utopian otherworld enables us to engage the past and present incarnations of the museum, both real and imagined, and begin to navigate its future. Papers are invited to address the following key themes, but we welcome and encourage any creative or imaginative ideas that correspond with the aims of the Symposium. Please see the complete Call for Papers here: http://www.tinyurl.com/mutopia ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).