Schöne Lecture 2025 I Shaping Professionalism in Museums I Léontine Meijer-van Mensch

Schöne Lecture 2025
20 November 2025, 7pm
Senatssaal, Technische Universität Berlin

Léontine Meijer-van Mensch: "Shaping Professionalism in Museums. Ideas and Transformations"

What does professionalism in museums mean, and how has this meaning evolved? For centuries, the idea of professional competence in museums has been shaped by wider cultural, political, and social frameworks. Concepts of expertise, authority, care, and responsibility have shifted, yet certain expectations have remained remarkably stable. By tracing these continuities and transformations, the lecture sharpens our understanding of current debates on what it means to be a museum professional today.

Léontine Meijer-van Mensch has been Director of Museum Rotterdam since 2024, where she positions the museum as a dynamic, relational institution closely connected to the urban community. Previously, she headed the State Ethnographical Collections of Saxony, served as Programme Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, was Deputy Director of the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin, and taught heritage theory and professional ethics at the Reinwardt Academy in Amsterdam. She is actively involved in numerous international museum bodies, including as a former member of the Executive Board of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and founding president of the International Committee for Collecting (COMCOL). She currently chairs the ICOM Ethics Committee and serves on the board of the European Museum Forum.

The yearly Schöne Lecture is organized between the Department of Modern Art History at Technische Universität Berlin and the Richard Schöne Gesellschaft für Museumsgeschichte e.V. You can find more information on previous lectures following this link: https://www.tu.berlin/en/kuk/events/e...

00:00 Introduction – Iñigo Salto Santamaría (TU Berlin & RSG)
06:50 Lecture "Shaping Professionalism in Museums. Ideas and Transformations", Léontine Meijer-van Mensch (Museum Rotterdam)

Organisation der Veranstaltung: Sophia Gräfe und Iñigo Salto Santamaría
Studentische Mitarbeiter*innen: Aylin Birdem, Lars Hemmerich, Diệu Ly Hoàng, Anna Maria Rilke, Jakob Weißbarth
Video und Ton: Omram Bhagchandani, Jakob Jammer