The FÍSOS Mobile School is an annual conference for museums and curators. This year, the mobile school took place in the Netherlands, where almost 120 visitors made their way to Amsterdam from October 10-13. The conference is organized by the Icelandic Museums and Museum Professionals Association. These conferences place a strong emphasis on providing important professional development and continuing education for the profession, creating a platform for education, knowledge and networking.
The program was very well organized and 29 museums were visited, as there is plenty to do in the museum flora in the Netherlands, of which 35 were seminars and workshops where experts in their field led discussions and were available for interviews. Most of the museums were located in Amsterdam, but participants could also choose to visit Amersfoort or Utrecht, on the second day they could choose to visit museums in Leiden, The Hague or Rotterdam. Two keynote speakers gave talks at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. On the one hand, it was Harm Stevens, curator and curator in the history department, and on the other hand, Annemies Broekgaarden, head of the department of communication and education, but both talks were very interesting in their fields.
The museums were very diverse, they were city history museums, art museums, a railway museum, a clock museum, a science museum, an anthropology museum to name a few. We also visited futuristic storage spaces where the collections of different museums are preserved in buildings that are specifically designed and built for the preservation of museum objects and it is safe to say that they have inspired many collectors.
It is safe to say that conference guests went home full of practical and good ideas after the diverse visits and presentations by experts, and underlined how important it is for museum professionals in Iceland to learn from foreign colleagues and become familiar with their practices.
The annual festival of museum workers was part of the program of the mobile school, with accompanying dancing and joy, and took place at the conference hotel Mövenpick Hotel Amsterdam City Centre. The mobile school board deserves credit for a well-organized and extremely interesting and meaningful mobile school.