Keynote Speakers

Agnès Alfandari, Head of Multimedia Department,
Musée du Louvre

With a degree in the History of Art (Sorbonne and École du Louvre), Agnès Alfandari has worked in the cultural multimedia sector for over a decade first as an author, scriptwriter and scientific authority, then as a designer and project leader before overseeing all the multimedia projects at the Musée du Louvre.

Before working at the Louvre she developed the Web sites of several national museums such as the Musée Picasso, Musée de l’Orangerie, Château de Fontainebleau, Musée Gustave-Moreau and Musée de la Renaissance, to name a few. Fascinated by the new possibilities offered by multimedia in the approach to works of art, she worked extensively on mediation projects intended for families and schoolchildren as well as on scientific projects for tapping the creative potential of the new technologies.

David Anderson, OBE
Director of Learning and Interpretation,
Victoria and Albert Museum, England

David Anderson was born in Belfast and studied Irish history at Edinburgh University. After working as a history teacher in a state school, he became Education Officer at the Royal Pavilion Art Gallery and Museum, Brighton (1979) then Head of Education at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (1985). He joined the Victoria & Albert Museum as Head of Education in 1990. As Director of Learning and Interpretation at the V&A he is now manager of the V&A’s learning services, community programmes, and audience research and gallery interpretation; he also has responsibility for cultural policy, diversity and external partnerships across the V&A.

His publications include A Common Wealth, a report for the Government on the development of museums and learning in the United Kingdom (1997, second edition 1999) and (as co-author) A Netful of Jewels, a review of the potential for digital learning through museums for the UK Conference of National Museum Directors (1999). Other publications include Museums, Keyworkers and Lifelong Learning (2001) and New Lamps for Old (2005), as well as many book chapters, articles and conference papers such as “The Listening Museum” in the NMDC/IPPR publication Learning to Live (2009).

From 2003 to 2008, as co-Chair of the Exhibition Road Cultural Group, David Anderson shaped the development of a new organisation dedicated to development of cultural and educational programmes through partnership between 15 major institutions in South Kensington, including three national museums, three universities, the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Geographical Society and the Ismaili Centre.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Montreal-based electronic artist creates interactive installations that seek to provide critical platforms for public participation. His projects have been commissioned for the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico (1999), the UN Summit of Cities in Lyon (2003), the Expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004), Madison Square Park in NYC (2008), the 40th Anniversary of the Tlatelolco Student Massacre in Mexico City (2008) and the 50th Anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum in NYC (2009). His artworks have been shown in three dozen countries, including Art Biennials in Venice, Istanbul, Havana, Sydney, Liverpool, Shanghai, Seoul, Seville, New Orleans and others. His work is in collections such as MoMA in New York, MUAC in Mexico, Daros in Zürich, and the TATE in London. He has won two British Academy Awards BAFTAs, an Ars Electronica Golden Nica, a Bauhaus Award and a Rave Award from Wired Magazine. His website is at www.lozano-hemmer.com

Prof. Anthony Shelton

has been the Director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia since August 1, 2004. A distinguished anthropologist, administrator, curator and teacher originally from Britain, Prof. Shelton is a leader in museology, cultural criticism, and the anthropology of art and aesthetics. Dr. Shelton has 16 years of teaching, curatorial, and management experience at posts throughout England and in Portugal where he was Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology and Coordinator, Research Group in Material, Visual and Performative Cultures at the Universidade de Coimbra. Of the 13 exhibitions Dr. Shelton has curated or co-curated, three of the more innovative include African Worlds (Horniman 1999), Fetishism (Brighton, Nottingham, Norwich 1995), and Exotics: North American Indian Portraits of Europeans (Brighton 1991)?all of which used strong visual imagery to question notions of material culture and encourage discussion about the interplay of image, language, and meaning. He is extensively published on topics ranging from African visual culture, to Chinese puppets in the collections of the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, to Western constructions of tropes of otherness: fetishism, primitivism and exoticism.

George Siemens, Founder and President,
Complexive Systems, Inc.

George Siemens is Founder and President of Complexive Systems Inc., a research lab assisting organizations to develop integrated learning structures for global strategy execution. In 2006 he authored a book - Knowing Knowledge an exploration of how the context and characteristics of knowledge have changed, and what it means to organizations today. In 2009, he published the Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning with Peter Tittenberger.

George is currently affiliated with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) at Athabasca University. His role as a social media strategist involves planning, researching, and implementing social networked technologies, with focus on systemic impact and institutional change.