The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is currently hosting the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium, a twelve-day program aimed at forging links and developing dialogues between some of the world’s most influential museums. The fourteen participants represent a wide variety of institutions, including national, state, municipal, and private museums. The colloquium will explore the major challenges that museum directors face, including management issues, conservation matters, and the well-being of the global economy.

The colloquium is the first of its kind at the Met, and has been spearheaded by the museum’s Director and CEO, Thomas P. Campbell. In a press release from the museum, Campbell said, “Ideally, this exchange of ideas and expertise will generate collaborative thinking that will prove beneficial not only to the participating institutions but to museums on a much broader scale.”

The Met has been an international institution since its founding in 1870 and has continued to collaborate with museums across the globe through exhibitions as well as training and research projects. In addition, the museum organizes a number of programs that bring international curators, conservators, and scholars to New York.

Participants in the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium include Mohammed Fahim Rahimi, Chief Curator at the National Museum of Afghanistan; Victoria Noorthoorn, Director of the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires; Liang Gong, Director of the Nanjing Museum; Stijn Huijts, Director of the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht; and Steven Sack, Director of the Origins Center in Johannesburg.