The Last Supper—A farewell dinner to a permanent global community 

Written by Mandara Vishwanath, Head of Collections, Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) (India, ITP 2026)

It’s our last day at the International Training Programme and my heart is full from the warmth of having made some special bonds here. I am Mandara Vishwanath and I’m the Head of Collections at the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru, India.

I came to the BM with the hope to find solutions to practical concerns in Museology, collections storage and display and an ideal organisational structure as a blueprint for a young museum like MAP. Instead, I found myself a lot more emotionally invested in the people who make the museum—the earnestness and honesty of many of our facilitators and curators throughout the programme, the kindness and patience that the ITP team had with us and the bravery and vulnerability that many of my colleagues came with.

We began the day with future hope—about what our museums could look like in the future, how could we keep in touch and build relationships across our institutions, our countries and our people. Dora Jok, Senior ITP Fellow for this year and our mentor throughout the programme, led the session with two illustrative case studies. The first involved the repatriation of Sarawak objects back in a formal agreement amongst various stakeholders. I found the second case study appealing to my working study—a ‘spontaneous collaboration’ amongst civilians, museum staff, university academics and scientists to identify and collect the carcass of a sei whale, indigenous to the area and washed up along the Batang Lupar. The workshop and our journey over the past six weeks inspired us to reflect on the relationships that we have recently formed, think about how we want to shape our institutions and our cultures back home.

Later in the day, it was time for the infamous ITP quiz! Styled like a trivia pub quiz we bad questions about our learning’s through the programme—

– How many objects are on display at the BM?
– Which object has undergone extensive scientific research?
– ⁠Identify famous British foods from their images.
– ⁠Locate all the destinations we visited and all our partner museums across the UK on a map.

We got into quite the competitive spirit, wanting to prove how well we know the Museum and British culture, taking back a small part of it with us.

It was the day I felt closest to all my friends across the world. During our farewell barbecue dinner, many of us were emotional — it’s incredible how such a short period of time spent together with the same experiences at Schafer House or at Glasgow, Newcastle or Manchester, can make us feel like this is now our everyday life.

And so, it is with a heavy heart that I bid goodbye to my friends, mentors, facilitators and every supporter who has been part of this journey with me. We take back this experience and confidence and now enter the ITP network to be part of an international community of museum professionals. If ever you’re travelling to any of our countries, you already have a friend there. 🙂