Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, will be a keynote speaker at the Museums Association (MA) conference in October.
Describing London as a microcosm of a global society, Livingstone (top right) said museums play an instrumental role in representing the different cultural backgrounds of Londoners to each other.
Livingstone will tell conference about the work of the London Cultural Consortium, which was set up at the end of last year to coordinate the strategic development of culture in the capital. He will also cover the work of the African and Asian Heritage Commission - the long-awaited report from the commission is due out in the summer.
Yasser Mansour, the general coordinator for the Grand Museum of Egypt, will also address the conference. He will describe his vision for the new museum in Cairo, which will be the biggest museum in the world when it is completed in 2009.
One of the themes of conference will be valuing learning. Lisa Jardine, the chairwoman of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Museums and Galleries Committee, will speak at conference on the theme of the role of museums in sharing and advancing knowledge.
She told Museums Journal that she thought that successive governments had failed to understand the vital importance of museums in communicating cultural understanding. 'I am passionately interested in the power of museums to shape and inform our lives,'
she said.
Other speakers include: Alissandra Cummins (bottom right), the director of the Barbados Museum and the chairwoman of ICOM, who will give a keynote address covering the impact of globalisation on museums; and Kate Brindley, the director of Bristol Museums, who will look at the practical application of the recommendations of the MA's collections report.
Describing London as a microcosm of a global society, Livingstone (top right) said museums play an instrumental role in representing the different cultural backgrounds of Londoners to each other.
Livingstone will tell conference about the work of the London Cultural Consortium, which was set up at the end of last year to coordinate the strategic development of culture in the capital. He will also cover the work of the African and Asian Heritage Commission - the long-awaited report from the commission is due out in the summer.
Yasser Mansour, the general coordinator for the Grand Museum of Egypt, will also address the conference. He will describe his vision for the new museum in Cairo, which will be the biggest museum in the world when it is completed in 2009.
One of the themes of conference will be valuing learning. Lisa Jardine, the chairwoman of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Museums and Galleries Committee, will speak at conference on the theme of the role of museums in sharing and advancing knowledge.
She told Museums Journal that she thought that successive governments had failed to understand the vital importance of museums in communicating cultural understanding. 'I am passionately interested in the power of museums to shape and inform our lives,'
she said.
Other speakers include: Alissandra Cummins (bottom right), the director of the Barbados Museum and the chairwoman of ICOM, who will give a keynote address covering the impact of globalisation on museums; and Kate Brindley, the director of Bristol Museums, who will look at the practical application of the recommendations of the MA's collections report.