 Hello, everyone, and welcome to NEMO's webinar, Museums Making Sense, Dealing with the Discomfort of a Multicolored World. My name is Elizabeth, and I work for NEMO. As a network for museums in Europe, our main activities are advocating for museums at an EU level, providing training opportunities, providing a platform for museums to exchange and learn from each other, and helping museums to cooperate across borders. In this function, NEMO has increased its online engagement, which includes webinars, such as this one, with the hope that participants can continue their professional development even during these uncertain times. We are looking forward to today's webinar, hosted by Maria Vlafú. Maria is a cultural management and communications consultant. She's a founding member and executive director of Accesso Coutora, promoting access, physical, social, and intellectual to cultural participation. She is currently participating in the European project, Reshape, Reflect, Share, Practice, and Experiment, and is also the co-manager of the blog, Museums and Migration. In this webinar, Maria will propose the vision of a multicolored world, wherein we wish to bring a positive note and help ourselves and other people face the ambiguity and complexity with curiosity and joy. Our multicolored world expects us to invest more in getting properly informed and helping our visitors feel comfortable with nuance and complexity. Towards the end of the webinar, please submit your questions in the Q&A round using the chat function. And without further ado, I will hand this over to Maria to get started. Thank you very much, Elizabeth, Rebecca, all colleagues at NIMO. I think NIMO has been the organization that has challenged me the most in these last years, and I'm really thankful for this. And thank you to all colleagues who have joined us for this webinar, a special note for my Greek compatriots. Happy national day today. I chose a pair of shoes to illustrate this webinar. And this is because of a story I read in Gaynor Kavanaugh's book, A Dream Spaces Memory in the Museum. I don't know whether you've read it. It was published in the early 2000s. And by the way, all the books and articles and videos that I will be referring to during the webinar, you will get those references once we're finished. So I read this story in Gaynor Kavanaugh's book. She writes about a museum curator that opens a box and finds a pair of shoes, not necessarily these ones, but a pair of shoes. His experience allows him to date them to the 1920s. He recognizes a style and knows how maybe even where they were made. They are men's shoes of average size. He goes to the catalog. It confirms all the details of date, size and fabric. The fact that the shoes had such little wear intrigues him, they were very little used, they're almost as new. So after a couple phone calls, he finds the son of the shoes' former owner. He had been a bank clerk who had died in 1974 at the age of 79. He had bought the shoes so that he could take his wife dancing. He hated it, she loved it. She had died when he was in his early 40s, so he never wore them again. I chose this story to subtly introduce the issue of nuance in today's conversation. To illustrate the distance between museum facts, usually presented on labels and museum stories, human stories, which are not always revealed. I recently read that an Australian study showed that public heritage, and that means professionally run historic monuments, archaeological sites, national museums, memorials, grand homes, does not have a broad appeal, but that private family histories have a wide appeal. Perhaps I say because they feel more personal and also more relevant. Now I'll move on and share with you a couple of episodes of my encounters with nuance. These were not exactly subtle and they provoked a deep shock in me at the time. So my earliest memory of such an encounter comes from when I was about 12 years old. In a foreign, and by foreign I mean not Greek documentary, Alexander the Great was referred to as imperialist and murderer. And I remember being dumbstruck. My hero, the one that had undertaken such an endeavour with a soul wish to take the Greek civilization as far away as possible was called imperialist and murderer. And I think I must have been so shocked that I can't recall talking to anyone about it, not even my parents who were teachers. Then years later, when I was 21, I did a field trip to Turkey with my university. And when visiting the town of Afyon Karahissar in the interior, we saw a massive sculpture in the middle of a big square. And we were told that this was a representation of the Turkish struggle against the Greeks and guess who the fallen figure represents. And I remember that a froze. For someone with my education, the Turks were the occupiers, the torturers, the killers. There was no struggle of the Turks against the Greeks in my mind. And only years later, through literature, not history classes or visits to museums, did I find out what the Greek army also did in the early 1920s when it reached the front line of Afyon Karahissar. Finally, a third episode. I was already a master's student in the UK and my course took a field trip to Halifax. And there, in a museum whose name I can't recall, I saw a photo of Cypriot-Eoka freedom fighters fighting British rule, only that the label referred to them as terrorists. All three episodes relate to my countries and Cyprus's official history. And I can remember how confused I felt. I remember the discomfort, the disturbance, the uncertainty. And these are not pleasant feelings, not at first. And I say not at first because eventually I found the joy one can experience when confronted with nuance, the possibility to search more, to learn more, the strength we feel when having the knowledge and the joy in the discovery and the debate. These are things I learned to appreciate and nuance is not threatening to me. It has become a welcome challenge. In recent years, a couple of things have become quite clear to many of us. Many, perhaps most people, are looking for simple black and white answers and wish to avoid the discomfort of nuance. The world has become too complex for many of us. Things we took for granted, things that made us proud are being challenged by other people. People who were, we were not used to listen to, people who were not used to meeting and countering. So we slowly discover that our story is not the only story and that's deeply uncomfortable for many because we need to feel safe. That's a most human need. Hoplists and fascists past and present are very much aware of the gains they make by manipulating people's fears and offering protection. Their strategy often involves few simplistic slogans presenting the world in near versions of black and white, threats from others and safety on their side. Now, in his book, How Fascism Works, Jason Stanley quotes Hitler and his views on propaganda as expressed in Mein Kampf. And this is my translation, bad translation perhaps, from the Greek edition. Propaganda must always be popular and adopt its mental level to the receptive ability of the least intelligent among those whom it wishes to address. Effective propaganda needs to be limited to very few points which must be expressed in the form of slogans. Stanley says that throughout the book, Hitler makes it clear that the goal of propaganda is to replace rational arguments in the public sphere with irrational fears and passions. And he then refers to an interview with Steve Bannon where it is a 2018 interview where the chief of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign states that, we were elected with slogans, with the slogans, drain the swamp, lock Clinton up, build a wall on the border. That was pure anger. Anger and fear is what makes people go to the polls. Now, they've learned their lesson well, but so have we, haven't we? We know the strategy is based on the impoverishment of public debate and the appeal of the slogan, so how do we respond? Now, last June, I had the chance to attend an excite webinar called Misinformation Research, Engagement and Reflections. And there, Stephen Lewandowski, whose chair in cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol gave us two important tips. First of all, misinformation sticks, even when corrected. So I'm sure that we've all had conversations in these last years with family and friends where we tried to respond to what we considered an inaccurate statement with the facts. We might even have told all the people what to read in order to get better informed. Well, this doesn't work. In my case, at least it has never worked. Facts don't necessarily convince people. They will go on relying on misinformation that makes them comfortable, confirms their ideas. So Lewandowski told us in June that alternative stories, even in the format of a slogan to use their tactics, might be more convincing, might touch a cold. Now, the other point he gave us was that perceived authenticity may be more important than honesty. So in this case, we can think of a politician who lies constantly, can we think of anyone? And yet, his approval rates remain unaltered. And that's because people recognize in that politician someone who's fighting in their name a corrupt system, a system that has left them out. So in that case, lying becomes acceptable and is perceived as more authentic than honesty. And again, facts will not help us convince anybody. But authentic stories, everyday human stories might do just that. So I find these two tips very relevant for our discussion today regarding museums helping people deal with nuance and ambiguity. And I thought about this when I saw this post from the Imperial War Museum London regarding its new exhibitions on refugees. Now, we know how controversial the issue of refugees can become, how intense arguments and conspiracy theories can get. So in the promotion of this exhibition, the museum does not position itself for an argument, but asks a question that sets the base at the human and personal level directly interrogating us. What horrors would force you to leave everything behind? The museum affirms that its refugee season will unlock the personal stories of people forced to flee their homes and those who work to support them. Refugees will give visitors the space to consider their own responses to similar experiences and dilemmas. And as we can see, reviews in the press do seem to value this choice. For instance, the Londonist said that these three exhibitions don't pull their punches and nor should they when the global refugee crisis is likely to define this time in history. And if this year has made you reassess what you realize you can do without or actually can do without, the new refugee season at the Imperial War Museum will resonate on all kinds of levels from the domestic to the global, then that's from time out. Now, what makes me happily go to work every day is the conviction that civic participation is fundamental for the quality of our democracy. And specifically for our field, the contribution cultural participation can make to strengthen our democracy. Now, whenever our democracy becomes a little bit more participatory rather than representative, for instance, when there is a referendum, one of the main concerns is that citizens, voters are not well informed in order to make a decision. And this is why it feels more comfortable perhaps to delegate to this responsibility to professional politicians. At the same time, we have come to realize that this has not exactly liberated us. It has not benefited our democracy. We are left in a position where many among us feel helpless and that they have no influence in national and local decision-making. Constant abuses of power for personal gain have made many people look again for safety in politicians that wish to speak in the name of the people and pretend to fight the status quo. Now, some restless minds have looked for inspiration in ancient Greece and have looked at sortition, that is the random choice of citizens, as a possible way of balancing, bringing some balance into making politics. In Iceland, for instance, between 2010 and 2012, 25 common citizens helped write a new constitution. And in Ireland in 2013, 100 common citizens helped review eight articles of the constitution. And in 2015, the people of Ireland voted in a national referendum in favor of a change to the constitution that would allow gay marriage. These, another experiment on democratic innovation are analyzed in David Van Rijbroek's book Against Elections, The Case for Democracy. And there we see that common citizens, non-experts, when given the responsibility, they get involved, they get informed, they debate complex issues and make decisions. And I don't know whether you followed the recent elections in Chile where 78% of the voters voted for the need to rewrite the country's constitution and replace principles imposed 40 years ago by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. And actually, they also voted for the new constitution to be entirely drafted by a popularly elected body, meaning no active lawmakers can be involved in the process. Now, what have museums got to do with this? Museums are part of a country's educational and cultural network. Museums are not neutral and they're highly trusted. And I don't know whether you follow Colleen D. Len Schneider's blog, but she gives us some rare and concrete data on this that many times we miss. Museums deal with facts, knowledge, narratives, feelings, and that is everything that is at stake at this moment. So what can their role be? Back in July, Lonnie Bunch, who's the Smithsonian secretary, gave an interview to the New York Times. And what drew my attention was the quote after the title, the role of cultural institutions is to make people feel comfortable with nuance and complexity. Then in August, Lonnie Bunch participated in a debate organized by the Tropen Museum, the Dutch Museum. And he elaborated a bit more. He said that we are all anxiously looking for answers, wishing the world could be an easy black or white. And he asked, how do you help your audience embrace ambiguity, help them be comfortable with debate and not just look for simple answers, help them deal with complexity and shades of gray. One of the first things that came to my mind when I heard this, when I read this was are museums ready for this? Because Lonnie Bunch said that museums should help their audience embrace ambiguity. But are there staff, the people working in museums, all of us ready to embrace ambiguity and complexity? The way people from our field in different countries have reacted to the challenging of established narratives makes me wonder, because what I have seen is defensive attitudes, irony, superficial, and sometimes deeply uninformed comments, and most of all, the avoidance of dialogue. How can some of the most vocal people among us be almost always absent from events when the main speaker is someone who doesn't think like them? Why do we avoid getting involved in face-to-face dialogue between us? Why aren't we humble enough to show up in events when we'll have the chance to listen and not necessarily to speak? How ready are we to help all the people deal with nuance and complexity if we ourselves haven't done our homework? So this is a first point I would like to make. How do we prepare ourselves for these challenges? The work needs to start from within. We can have a look, for instance, at the American case. The year of 2014 was also marked in the US by the death of unarmed black people in the hands of police officers. And that same year, in a joint statement, different museum professionals denounced the fact that only the association of African-American museums had issued a formal statement, and they said, we believe that the silence of other museum organizations sent a message that these issues are the concerns only of African-Americans and African-American museums, and we know that this is not the case. We are now in 2020, with more black people dead by white police officers and white citizens, and more cultural organizations in the US did not remain silent this time. They realized they could not remain silent, and in that sense, this is a big step forward, in my view, from 2014. At the same time, though, the media and social media were full of criticism regarding their statements. Stuff from different museums and all the cultural organizations in the US and elsewhere denounced the structural racism they face within these organizations, revealing a big gap between public statements and internal management. This came as a shock to many, I'm sure, but only by listening or reading to the testimonies of those colleagues, as is the case of the Instagram account, better Guggenheim, among others, can we come to have some idea of what those colleagues are talking about. We have already seen some resignations and some intense discussions. I believe that the process of truly reconsidering diversity and inclusion in museum management has certainly started, and it is full of nuance and complexities we will have to deal with. I don't know whether you have followed the controversy regarding the decision of four museums to postpone a Philip Guston exhibition. The museums are the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Tate Modern in London. Among the works exhibited would be Guston's paintings and drawings of hooded Ku Klux Klan figures. And although critics of the decision to delay the exhibition believed that there could have been a better moment for those works to be exhibited and that it reveals uncertainty and paralysis considering the changes that are happening, I tend to think that it's exactly the opposite. Well, uncertainty, yes, perhaps, but not paralysis. The four museum directors acknowledge that in the current cultural climate there is a need for additional perspectives. They cannot do business as usual. In a moment like this, they cannot and should not present an exhibition that is very much about race but curated exclusively by white people. And I don't think this indicates a paralysis. Those of you who wish to invest some time on this, I recommend reading Gemma Decise. This work isn't for us. You will receive the link after the webinar. And inspired by all this intense debate, our association here in Portugal Access Culture will be launching a new course in December called Diverse in Inclusion, Questions for Ourselves, followed by six seminars in 2021 with colleagues working in different areas of the Portuguese culture sector. So we hope that in this way, we can feed the debate. Now, having made this point about the need for honest introspection to start with, let's also consider our relationship with society at large. As I said in the beginning, we have all witnessed the discomfort and fear contrasting worldviews and narratives that are causing to many people. Many are desperately looking for the comfort of someone that will confirm their own views and self-image. Others are accusing feminists, anti-racists, activists in different causes of being the source of all this trouble because they keep talking about it. And with slogans such as all lives matter or we are all human, they wish to reaffirm their humanity and move on. But this won't work. I don't think it has worked so far. We all wish to move on, move forward, but I don't think it can or should happen without acknowledging injustice. It cannot happen by trying to silence and blame those asking for justice. It is complex, it is confusing, it is uncomfortable, and it is also scary. And apart from all these, people haven't got the time. They, we, all of us haven't got the time to inform ourselves on all these issues. It takes a lot of reading and listening. So what can we as museums do about this? How can we be of use to other people in dealing with this diversity and complexity of issues? Going back to Lonnie Bunch, in the Tropin Museum debate, he said that he wants museums not to reflect but to lead this debate, and I agree. And I believe that museums can actually contribute to this for two main reasons. First of all, they're not universities. They're not the place someone goes to in order to become an expert on something. So museums do the research and then present it in a more digestible and approachable form, as stated in Nemo's summary regarding this year's conference. So people don't need to consult a whole bibliography but can come to the museum and get some clues on a certain topic. Clues that may get them thinking and talking to each other. The other positive thing is that museums don't give lectures. They adopt more creative ways of presenting content and engaging people in dialogue. So they can subtly introduce nuance and ambiguity in the debate without giving people the feeling that they are trying to force an idea on them. And I'll give you a few examples of my experiences as a museum visitor, not an innocent museum visitor, of course, because I'm always a professional as well. So one of my first experiences where a museum told me, look, there's not only one story about a given object, was in the early 2000s at In Flanders Fields Museum. This is a museum about the First World War in the town of Ypres or Ypres in Belgium. Here you can see on this photo a case where a bunch of white hunger chiefs are exhibited. And the museum told visitors about the multiple uses such an object had in the war. To cover the nose and protect oneself from lethal gas, to surrender, to cover a person's eyes before execution. So one same object, different uses and narratives. Delaware Historical Society in the United States opened an exhibition in 2017 about the history of the state of Delaware. It was called Delaware One State Many Stories. Objects in this exhibition could be seen from two sides in transparent glass cases. Labels also had two sides. So looking at them from the one side, one could discover Delaware, a general history of the state. Looking at them from the other side, one could discover a journey to freedom, the history of African-Americans in the state. So again, two sides to a story, two narratives regarding one object. The year after this exhibition in 2018, Sarah Bond was asking whether art museums can question early American connections to slavery. And here we have an attempt at Worcester Art Museum where next to the usual labels, we have another version of the story revealing the connections of the person depicted to slavery. Finally, some years ago, when I first visited Anne Frank House, visitors at the time were confronted at the exit with a free-to-choose videos. These were carefully selected stories regarding conflicting human rights. We were supposed to watch those videos and then vote. And I've chosen two videos. You can access them all and you'll get the link to that on the Anne Frank House website. But here I chose two where the main issue is freedom of religion. So let's see that. Said it! Jesus is Lord! Obviously you're wearing the turban. How important is that for you? It's very important. It's part of my religion, it's part of my face, and it's something which I've always worn. If you would not have been able to wear it, would you have been a police officer? No, no. I... Hopefully I'll be a police officer for 30 years, but I'll be sick for life. In Great Britain, the police are permitted to wear clothing that expresses their personal religious beliefs. Many other countries, such as the Netherlands, choose to safeguard the independent status of figures of authority by imposing a ban on religious clothing and symbols. But in London, this is seen as a policy that actually keeps people from integrating into society. What they will effectively be saying is that there are sections of the community which they don't want to participate in in all civil aspects of life. They are going to exclude sections of the community and we want that. So one question and let's see another video. Again, where the main subject is freedom of religion. This is Wesley from Holland. Wesley is gay. When he grows up, perhaps he will marry his friend. Women who marry women and men who marry men. More and more countries around the world are allowing couples of the same sex to marry and to adopt children. In the Netherlands, civil marriage has been an option for homosexuals and lesbians since 2001. In the Netherlands, civil marriages are solemnized by an official of the civil registry. A small minority of these officials refuse to solemnize gay marriages. In the Bible it says that it is a marriage between a man and a woman. And that is why I have trouble with it. It is important that a lawyer adjusts the law. That is what it is about. And of course, if I hear such a story, I can imagine that it is also very serious and I hope that it can be done properly. But you cannot expect at this time that you can refuse. And the Dutch government shares this opinion. An official of the civil registry may not refuse to join gay couples in marriage. But does this mean that Orthodox Christian Dutch citizens can therefore no longer fulfill the position of official of the civil registry? Must we not have respect for and allow for the opinions of those who feel differently towards gay marriages and who cannot reconcile such marriages with their religion? I don't disagree. There are 20 entrepreneurs and there are 17 who can do it with full conviction. Why should I do it while I have the only trouble with it? So one more question from the museum. So as I said, there are more videos on the museum on the Anne Frank House website. They're still being used for educational purposes. And I remember the time that it wasn't easy. Some of these questions, I was confronted with them for the first time and it was not easy to answer a simple yes or no. So it got us thinking and realizing that things are not black or white because life is not black or white. Now a new book which I finished recently called the Museums and Social Change Challenging the Unhelpful Museum, I love the subtitle, puts human relations at the center of its reflection. In a number of case studies, we read about certain museums' option to collaborate with people who are the real experts, the true insiders in their own stories and those of people with similar life experiences. In a number of, sorry, they can bring a layer of interpretation that experts will not be able to discover by simply studying objects and records, just like the story about the shoes I shared in the beginning. And thus they can create more personal, more human connections with visitors and foster a better understanding, we hope, or at least encourage people to listen to a new different version from the one they knew. In the museum, we find out that colleagues from the Museum of Homelessness, for instance, tell us in this book that about a third of people in the UK believe that most homeless people have probably made bad choices in life that have got them into their situation. And similar numbers believe that alcohol or drug dependency is the single biggest contributor to homelessness. And in reality, the biggest single contributor to homelessness today is the end of a short, short-haul tenancies. That means that is the fact that a landlord or a landlady can just put someone in the street without further explanations. The museum collaborated with people who had experienced homelessness. They asked them to bring an object of their choice and tell the story in the first person. And these are people we normally avoid looking in the eye or perhaps we avoid looking altogether. Through these co-curated or co-created stories, other people can get to understand homelessness better, free from stereotypical and prejudiced views. People find out that there are many forms of homelessness, forced reallocation for single mothers to sit these miles away from their support networks, detention centers, young people sofa surfing, temporary accommodation that is unfit for human habitation. These are just a few examples of why people end up homeless. The history of homelessness is full of new ones, just like every history. And this brings to my mind, Ariana Curtis' truly inspiring TED Talk. Museums should honor the everyday, not just the extraordinary. You will get also this link in the references, but I think that Nim also shared it on their Facebook page yesterday. Now, in that talk, Curtis, who's a curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, tells us that representation matters and that inspirational and aspiring stories are not necessarily representative because they don't reflect everyday realities. And I think that this could somehow be complimented by Angela Davis, who in her book, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, she wrote, it is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals in order for people today to recognize their potential agency as a part of an ever-expanding community of struggle. Now, after saying this, and because I do believe that museums are not neutral and that they should be leading certain debates, I must also make another point. All museums need to have their own well-defined, short and clear mission. This kind of museum activism or museum practice in general can only make sense and can only be honest and efficient when serving a concrete mission. We cannot risk our reputation by reacting opportunistically to current events because people will know, people will understand and we will lose their trust and respect. So our actions need to truthfully reflect our mission, our values and principles. Now, contrary to what many museums believe, the mission of museums is not to collect, preserve, research and exhibit and interpret objects. This is how they do what they do, it's not why they do it. So I invite you to have a look at a concrete example which I mentioned in my article, Dividing Issues and Mission-Driven Activism, which is included in the book, Museum Activism. Now, if you remember, days after the president of the United States issued the so-called Muslim ban in 2017, the Museum of Modern Art in New York reacted. It replaced certain works of art hanging on its walls with others made by artists coming from a nation whose citizens were being denied entry into the United States. And they did this because as one can read on the label, they wished to affirm the ideals of welcome and freedom as vital to this museum as they are for the United States. Now, some people might think, isn't the museum taking a political position? Should it be doing this? Wouldn't some people become alienated by such actions? At the time, I went to check what the museum's mission was and I didn't find a clear mission statement on MoMA's website, but in the section Who We Are, they established some principles that orientate their work. And there we see that MoMA recognizes that modern and contemporary art transcend national boundaries, that it is essential to affirm the importance of contemporary art and artists if the museum is to honor the ideals with which it was founded and to remain vital and engaged with the present. And also that to remain at the forefront of its field, the museum must have an outstanding professional staff and must periodically reevaluate itself, responding to new ideas and initiatives with insight, imagination, and intelligence. The process of reevaluation is mandated by the museum's tradition, which encourages openness and a willingness to evolve and change. I consider that the museum's decision fitted in its mission respected its principles. I checked how people reacted on Facebook to this announcement and the big majority expressed support, respect, and pride. But me checking the comments on Facebook is not exactly a proper visitor survey. This could be just my wishful thinking or a very subjective interpretation. Once again, it is Colleen Dylan Schneider that gives us the data. At the time, her company identified a reputation boost in MoMA's case. More people affirmed that they admired the museum, that it was one of the three best art museums in the US that they were planning to visit. She could not identify another event or decision that could have explained this reputation boost back then. And she wrote, these data points to a potential conclusion that may make some culture organizations uncomfortable. Perhaps the market wants us to take a stand. More than that, the data may underscore something more fundamental for cultural organizations, standing up for your mission matters. So these things somehow all boil together in my mind, the need for people, all of us, citizens to be involved, the need to be informed, and to be able to deal with other people's truths in our multicultural world, without considering them a threat, but rather a welcome challenge and a personal and collective wealth. The need to feel empowered and realize our potential, our role in society, no matter how small we feel or how small the impact of our actions is, because things start in our families, our circle of friends and colleagues, our neighborhoods, and if they stay there, that's fine because that's our contribution. We need to discover our common humanity, our common values, our curiosity, and love for knowledge, freedom, and democracy. Now I'll conclude by quoting an economist, Martha Nassbaum, whose words I got to know through Bernadette Lynch, a museum professional who wrote the introduction for the book I mentioned before, Museums and Social Change. So Lynch, in her introduction, questions what type of empowerment people actually need from museums. And she quotes Nassbaum, who in 1997 coined the phrase that people need to be fitted for freedom. She noted that freedom of thought and human dignity are capabilities to be developed, capabilities that according to Lynch, the useful museum may foster and support in order, and again she quotes Nassbaum, in order to produce free citizens, citizens who are free, not because of wealth or birth, but because they can call their minds their own. So can we imagine museums doing just that? Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Maria. That was really, really wonderful. Quite inspiring past 40 minutes, I would say. I have to mention that especially in the beginning, I found it quite a bit intense just before the US election upcoming. So we are now accepting questions in the chat, but to begin with, I actually had a couple of questions of my own. In the end here, you did mention some, you know, the importance of a museum creating its own mission or abiding by that. If museum professionals are seeking to, perhaps for the first time, create their mission or reevaluate theirs, do you have some like important points that you think should always be addressed when embarking on that journey? It's that introspection again. I think we have a big difficulty usually in answering the question, why do we do what we do? We always find, let's say, support in the museum definition of ICOM or other definitions where, as I said, they explain what we do, not why we do it. So perhaps trying to discover what our vision about the world is and how we think that what we do in museums, in everyday work and contribute towards that dream, that vision, what we want also as professionals to be our contribution to society. So this needs to be clear in our minds. An exhibition is not a good exhibition because we say so, because we find it interesting as professionals. An exhibition is a good exhibition because it makes connections. It makes people wonder, question. It makes them feel uncomfortable as well and comfortable. I remember that quote of, I think it was about art that it should, what was it? It should comfort the disturbed and disturb those comfortable. So it's not easy. It's not easy. It's not easy to define that, to take a stand. But I think it makes, our work makes sense, first of all. And if it makes sense for us, a better sense for us, then we can also communicate that and share that with other people. Absolutely. I love that focusing on the why we do what we do. That's great, big questions though. So another question that we have here, also a big one. Do you believe that museums have a role in the policy of making of a country? Do you think that they can support the social and cultural policies? I think that if a museum is conscious of its role in society, I would say there's no question about that. Museums are part of the social and cultural network of the country. So if we want to imagine together a future as a society, if we want to have a dream, share that dream, then of course I cannot see museums outside of this, let's say common effort to build something better. I think it just makes sense to me. I cannot see it otherwise. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of what you had said earlier about that museums simply cannot be neutral. They were never neutral. Actually, sometimes it's very funny. I started my master course in 1993 and the subject of my first coursework, I was 23 at the time, was whether museums should be neutral. And I defended that, yes, at the time. Now almost 30 years later, wow, it's been a long way. Museums are never neutral. I mean, museums make choices every day, which are political choices. What they will collect, what they will preserve, how they will interpret, what they will not show, what they are not going to say. There's nothing neutral in that, nothing neutral. Yeah, we all have to go through those transitions, those learning points, and as you said before, it's confusing, it's scary, but I'd love that you point out too that in these scary, confusing moments that we can also find the joy and the opportunity to learn new things. And the excitement, yeah. I think we are not curious enough as professionals as well. Maybe those were scared, I don't know, but sometimes we lose our curiosity and that's what drives us actually as human beings. Yeah, there's so much truth in that. So we have another one here. How do you think, how to defend ourselves against accusations that we, as employees of public institutions, are too much emotionally involved in our work by speaking out on important political issues? Would you say there is a boundary that we should not cross? It's a hard balance, it's very difficult. I understand that about people working in public state organizations, but I think it's the same also in, if it was private organizations, depending on what the organization's mission is and the people who lead it consider to be their principles. It's always difficult. Now, I won't call it emotional, you know? I think we need to show that we're not cold. As I said, facts, only facts, clear cold facts. Don't convince anybody. We don't engage like that as human beings. And if we see our relationship with the society outside the museum, we want to bring the society in, this is a human relationship. It's human beings discussing, debating, engaging. And yeah, I don't know if it was the intention and the question. I felt a bit that the adjective sentimental had a negative tone. I think we should be honest, truthful, put some sentiment in it as well. It's human. We shouldn't be dishonest. We shouldn't try to manipulate things because it's not right and because also the people who we wish to engage with will know immediately. Just think of our friendships, professional relationships. People will know immediately. So be truthful and honest and open for a real dialogue, even if it is uncomfortable to us. Now, I do understand the point of the question. It's not easy keeping that balance. It's not easy. But also I remember Alice Proctor was in Portugal a couple of years ago. She's the one doing the uncomfortable art tours in the UK. I said, well, no matter what you say, you're always going to upset someone. Just decide who you want to upset. Nice. So I have here, this is more so a comment, I suppose, but I would say there is somewhat of a question inside it as well. It says, I think neutrality comes from showing all sides no matter how uncomfortable, creating healthy and calm discussion without censorship. I think we need, you know, depending on exhibitions, allowing some, I suppose, horrific aspects. So this was the comment itself. But I guess the question is about whether we should, whether we're looking for certain boundaries on censorship. I don't know if it is censorship or if it is the limits of freedom of expression because there are limits. There are legal limits to freedom of expression. And I believe that this question of showing all sides, would you show the so-called opinions? In my view, it's not opinion, it's total violence. Would you present without any comment, without any critical thinking the positions of people or movements or parties who are against human rights, who don't support and respect human life and other people's rights? So it's not just a question of showing all sides. There is, there needs to be a critical thinking around that. And that means you do take a position eventually. Yeah, yeah, it certainly comes back to not remaining neutral and coming back to your museum's mission in terms of how you present these things. You know, it reminds me a bit, I don't know if you, so I try to avoid it because it's not good for my mental health. But I did watch a short excerpt from an interview with Donald Trump, when a journalist asked him why he tweeted information that was clearly a conspiracy theory, it was not something based in fact. And he said, well, it was not a tweet, it was a re-tweet. So basically saying, I just put it, and he said, I put it out there without any further comments so people can make up their minds. Well, Trump may do that, and I hope he will be judged for that by US voters, but we as museums cannot pretend to be naive like that and say, I just put it out there and people can decide. Yeah, yeah, some commentary, some context. Yeah, coming back to the why, of course. Great. Well, unless we have some further questions, then I think at this point, we would bet you would do. It's definitely been a pleasure for us. For me as well, thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me. Yes, and I also just want to briefly mention to everyone currently participating that you will be sent to a thank you page at the end of this, where you're going to find a lot of great literature, I believe, that Maria has provided and resources. And in addition to that, you will also find more information about our upcoming European Museums Conference, which I would say absolutely suits the topics, these very intense topics that we've been going over for the past hour or so. Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you all for attending. Yes, thank you so much. Have a great afternoon.