Reconsidering the museum in Central Asia : institutions, spaces, approaches, and narratives

IFEAC is pleased to share the programme of the international conference entitled

“Reconsidering the museum in Central Asia: institutions, spaces, approaches, and narratives“

held on 2 June 2026 and organised by Svetlana GORSHENINA, Kristina BEKENOVA, Dilda RAMAZAN, Marinika SADGYAN.

 The full programme of the event can be downloaded here, and the argumentation is set out below.

Over the past three decades, museums of Central Asia have undergone profound transformations, specific to each republic and linked to the collapse of the Soviet system, the formation of new nation-states, and the constant tensions between global cultural models and unique local historical trajectories. Museums in the region, to varying degrees, have become key spaces in which questions of identity, heritage, memory, and power are articulated, contested, and reconsidered. Accordingly, the place and role of the museum as an institution in the context of global cultural, economic, and media shifts are currently being actively discussed in all Central Asian countries. At different levels — from government officials and directors of private galleries to independent curators and the interested public — the question of the museum’s purpose is increasingly being raised: it is presented as a conscientious and impartial “custodian of antiquities”; as an instrument of political power designed to illustrate new national narratives; as an intersocial mediator aimed to foster inclusivity among diverse visitor groups; as a mechanism for knowledge production and alternative education; or as an independent actor in cultural policy that shapes the cultural agenda and public debate.

Such reconsideration of the museum’s role comes from the recognition that it is no longer the only legitimate space for cultural representation. Moreover, the very concept of “museum” is undergoing a crisis and transformation.

In Central Asia, this process is complicated by the coexistence of the Soviet institutional legacy, post-Soviet nation-building strategies, international cultural interventions, and local, often informal or grassroots, initiatives. Parallel to the blurring of the very concept of “museum” and its institutional boundaries, other alternative, yet significant and comparable hybrid formats — “third” spaces and initiatives (art residencies, cultural centers, art clusters, memorial sites, temporary platforms, galleries) — are increasingly emerging. These spaces either assume some of the museum’s functions without necessarily claiming museum status, or, conversely, demonstratively reject them, provocatively declaring themselves “non-museums,” whose goal is to radically transform “traditional” museum forms.

It is precisely these transformations of the museum in Central Asia, in the specific contexts of individual countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan), and the transgression of its institutional boundaries and practices, perceived either as a crisis of museum practice or as a visible confirmation of existing resources, that will be the focus of the conference’s discussions.
Without losing sight of the historical perspective, beginning with the 19th century, when the museum — a specifically European institution — was introduced to Central Asia during the early stages of Russian colonial presence, and acknowledging the asynchronous nature of contemporary transformations across the republics, the conference proposes to approach the museum not as a given and not even as a cultural institution, but as a specific spatial, political, and epistemological construct embedded within specific national, historical, and urban contexts, where various forms of power and different types of memory are refracted. The museum can be both a space for negotiation and an arena for “memory wars,” where various conflicting regimes of legitimacy collide; an object of decolonial critique demanding radical change (decolonization); a structuring element of the urban and cultural landscape; a participant in economic and network processes; a screen for state cultural policy; and a mechanism for constructing personal reputation.

This conference proposes to critically rethink the museum as an institution in Central Asia not as a stable and self-sufficient form, but as a dynamic field of tensions between state and society, official narratives and alternative practices, architecture and urban memory, global standards and local knowledge regimes. The conference recognizes the fundamental heterogeneity of museum regimes in Central Asian countries. However, its goal is to create a shared analytical framework in a comparative perspective for studying Central Asian museums beyond normative Western models, as well as to strengthen research and professional networks within the region and beyond.

Diana Skiba

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