Dear COMCOL friends,

We will be holding the COMCOL members meeting on November 3, 2025 at 17:00 CET. We will have a special guest speaker, Noelle Kahanu who will be talking about her work as a curator and Hawaiian culture bearer focusing on imagining Indigenous futures for colonial collections. The talk, which is organised in cooperation with Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, will be in English. Spanish translation will be available.

In addition to the guest speaker’s presentation, we will be announcing the voting results for the next cycle of COMCOL Board members. Please remember you have until midnight CET on October 28 to vote. The email with your personal members voting link was sent out to you via the COMCOL Chair on October 9th. If you did not receive this email or have issues accessing this link, please reach out to: Danielle Kuijten Chair COMCOL chair.comcol@icom.museum, and Leen Beyers leen.beyers@antwerpen.be.

More information about Noelle’s presentation, meeting zoom link, and the annual meeting agenda is below.

COMCOL Annual Members Meeting information:
November 3, 2025 – 17:00 CET
Zoom link: https://iu.zoom.us/j/87650098942
Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll):  +13092053325,87650098942# or +13126266799,87650098942#
Or Telephone: Dial: +1 309 205 3325 (US Toll) or +1 312 626 6799 (US Toll)
Webinar ID: 876 5009 8942
International numbers available: https://iu.zoom.us/u/kcuZhxxjpP

Special Guest Keynote Speaker and Presentation – Noelle Kahanu presents:

I Ka Pō Loa, In the Long Night. Hawaiians believe that darkness is not to be feared. Rather, it is a time of creation and genesis. How can we find opportunities despite local, national, and global challenges to our museums and related institutions? What does it look like to share authority and seed trust to build a future together? Noelle will engage with these questions, and how work around imagining Indigenous futures for colonial collections can become a catalyst for generative opportunities, transformative experiences, and reciprocal relationship building.

Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu (Kanaka ʻOiwi/Native Hawaiian) is a fifteen-year veteran of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, HI, where she developed scores of exhibitions and programs. She worked on the renovation of Hawaiian Hall (2009), Pacific Hall (2013), and the landmark E Kū Ana Ka Paia exhibition (2010).  She has a law degree from the University of Hawaiʻi and previously served as Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. where she worked on issues affecting Native Hawaiians, American Indians, and Alaska Natives. She is currently an associate specialist in Public Humanities and Native Hawaiian Programs at UH Mānoa’s American Studies Department and acting director of the Museum Studies Graduate Certificate Program. Her current research and practice explores the liberating and generative opportunities when museums “seed” rather than cede authority.

Annual Members Meeting Agenda: 

• Welcome (5 minutes)
• Keynote speaker (30 minutes)
• Discussion and Question and Answers (20 minutes)
• Annual  Meeting (20 minutes):
  – COMCOL, IC committee annual results 2024-2025
  – Announcement: COMCOL Newly Elected Board Members and Chair

We look forward to seeing you all there!