At this lunch talk, hosted by Malmö Art Museum in Kungsparken, we’ll address the Museum Why network - a collective institutional mobilisation, co-conceived by Malmö Art Museum, working on rethinking and reshaping art institutions. Since our founding in 2020 the network has critically assessed the changing role of art institutions in society, stressing the need for more democratic and ecological values. In 2025 PASS – Center for Practice-Based Art Studies at the University of Copenhagen joined as one of the network’s new partners bridging our programs into academia. We’ll be in the company of Anne Julie Arnfred, curator and postdoctoral researcher at PASS, who will reflect on the work of Museum Why and PASS, how theory is brought into practice as well as ideas on how knowledge is produced and the forms it can take.

The lunch talk is moderated by Anne Thomasen curator at Malmö Art Museum and member of the Museum Why network.

Anne Julie Arnfred (she/her, DK) is a curator and postdoctoral researcher at PASS – Center for Practice-Based Art Studies in Denmark. She holds a PhD from Roskilde University (2019-2024) and was a research fellow at Advanced Practices, Goldsmiths, University of London (2019-2024). At PASS, she leads the research project Beyond the Page: Exhibitions as Situated Acts of Publication and curates PASS’s experimental publication formats - whatever form they may take. Arnfred’s research operates at the intersection of artistic, academic, and lived epistemologies.

Anne Thomasen (she/her, DK) works as a freelance-based curator primarily exploring spaces and contexts from intersectional feminist, queer, and decolonizing perspectives. Her academic background in visual culture, art history, gender studies, and digital theory has accumulated into a specific interest in the crossroads between visual art, digital culture, social sciences, and institutional change.