The National Museum concludes a series of lectures on museum management in the twenty-first century

The National Museum, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution – the world’s largest museum and research complex and the United States’ preeminent cultural centre– and the U.S. Embassy in Oman, has concluded a series of six lectures on 21st century curatorship for Omani museum professionals, specialists and students.
 
The lectures were hosted by Dr. Paul Michael Taylor, an anthropologist who is Curator for Asian, European, and Middle Eastern Cultures, as well as Director of the Asian Cultural History Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
 
The last lecture, titled " The Activities of a Modern Museum or Cultural Center: Thriving in the 21st Century" focused on how museums function as cultural centres and on modern museum curation. The lecture highlighted several examples from Indonesia, during a period of rapid expansion of a national museum system, surveying outreach, research, and development of collections. Dr. Taylor explained why and how specific initiatives are selected as means of achieving the goal of having a museum thrive as a cultural centre – illustrating the process of how two Smithsonian exhibitions and initiatives were selected (on Sikh and Korean heritage). Finally, he briefly initiated a discussion (“Virtual Roundtable”) about how the themes of this webinar series may be applied to the Smithsonian partnership with Oman through exploring potential ideas for the future.