Today, we are not merely individuals immersed in an uninterrupted flow of images; we are part of a digital ecosystem that profoundly shapes how we perceive reality. Nicholas Mirzoeff, one of the most influential theorists of contemporary visual culture, defines this condition as a “crisis of visuality.” In his landmark work “The Right to Look”, Mirzoeff analyzes how an excess of visual stimuli risks turning us into passive spectators, stripping us of the ability to critically inhabit what we see.

The workshop program for the third edition of the EDI Global Forum (March 18-20, 2026) has been designed to respond to this challenge. Museums, cultural and social organizations, academies, and universities are joining EDI to transform the concept of the museum into a laboratory for collective experimentation that “steps outside of itself,” engaging with public and social spaces. This vision is shared by a prestigious cultural and museum network including The Met (New York), thePeggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice), Asia Culture Center (Gwangju), Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), EKKM – Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (Tallinn), MUSEION (Bolzano), MAMbo (Bologna), Palazzo Strozzi (Florence), MART (Rovereto), Centro Pecci (Prato), Pistoia Musei (Pistoia), MUCIV – Museo delle Civiltà (Rome), Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte (Naples), Museo Madre (Naples), Pio Monte della Misericordia (Naples), Pompeii Children’s Museum, the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, Suor Orsola Benincasa University (Naples), Scuola Superiore Meridionale (Naples), Dedalus Cooperative (Naples), The Docks (Naples), and Fondazione Terzo Luogo (Naples).

In this co-creative space, professionals from the worlds of art, education, and learning will collaborate to transform the museum’s vision into a sensory and bodily experience, capable of moving beyond the institution’s physical and conceptual boundaries. The goal is to transcend purely optical consumption in favor of a holistic dimension, where the image ceases to be a mere aesthetic datum and becomes a tool for civil participation and care.

Through shared practices centered on the ecology of the gaze, the program aims to restore the “right to look” and the opportunity to take part in the construction of new meanings, rendering the museum a common good accessible to everyone. In this way, the institution ceases to be a simple container for objects and becomes a living, expanded organism: a laboratory open to all citizens, where visual awareness is transformed into civil action, inclusion, and a sensory rediscovery of the world.