Materials
See below for the attendee list, presentations, recordings and handouts that were released by the presenters from the 2023 ARCS Conference held on November 7-10, 2023 in Montréal, Quebec, Canada
For the conference schedule see link here:
To view session reviews for select sessions as created by our 2023 Conference Stipend Awardees please see link below:
*Please note: If you have any issues accessing any of the materials, please contact info@arcsinfo.org. The conference recordings and materials are provided to attendees only and should not be shared with non-attendees.
Name of Session |
Description |
Speakers |
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A |
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| ARCS 2023 Conference Opening Remarks, Land Acknowledgement and Committee Reports |
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| ARCS 2023 Conference Keynote Repatriation, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility |
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| ARCS 2023 Conference Closing Remarks | |||
| A New Pathway for Collection Professionals: The ART-CC Fellowship. A Partnership with Fisk University and LACMA | Fisk University Galleries and LACMA received an IMLS grant in 2021 to embark on an unprecedented fellowship program to create a pathway for HBCU graduates to jobs in the collection field. The Assessment Recruitment and Training in Collections and Conservation Fellowship Program (ART-CC) establishes an alternate avenue by providing on-the-job training in Registration, Collection Management and Conservation for two HBCU graduates. ART-CC’s goals are to preserve Black history and increase public access to Fisk’s collection through a collection assessment and to develop underrepresented voices and future museum leaders. The two year program will enable the Fellows to be qualified and equipped with the skills needed for entry-level positions in Collections. ART-CC has provided one year of training at LACMA. During the second year at Fisk , they will complete a collection assessment alongside Gallery staff. We will share and discuss the fellowship and its inception, development, and hear directly from the Fellows regarding their experience in the program thus far. We hope that by sharing this program we can help inspire museums to develop similar programs with HBCUs to broaden access to and interest in a collections care career, and work towards creating a more equitable and inclusive museum field. |
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B |
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| Beyond Renaming: Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge into Collections Stewardship | As with many collections containing historical artworks, there are works in WAG-Qaumajuq’s holdings that are culturally inappropriate in today’s context. This includes titles, subject matter, and cataloguing. Phase One of the Artworks Renaming Initiative at WAG-Qaumajuq addressed the first grouping of these problematic pieces by incorporating Indigenous knowledge into retitling a selection of works. The objective of the Artworks Renaming Initiative is to give new names to identified artworks with the assistance of Indigenous Elders, knowledge keepers, and language keepers. This presentation will discuss the strategy implemented in completing Phase One of the Artworks Renaming Initiative by outlining the methods used to select artworks for the project, how works were renamed, and the development of future renaming within the collection. The Initiative was undertaken to directly address UNDRIP and to tangibly incorporate Indigenous knowledge into the cannon of art history and the art institution, beginning with WAG-Qaumjauq. The goal of this presentation is to offer a rough template for other collections specialists to undertake similar work withing their own collections, in an effort to further reconciliation and decolonization within our institutions. |
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| Big Changes in the Big Easy: International Implementation of a new CMS, a new DAMS/CMS integration, and a new online collections website | Laissez les bons temp rouler! This session will describe the multi-year implementation of a single collections management system (Axiell Collections) to manage all object, archival and library collections in a mid-sized New Orleans institution. You will hear from the perspectives of the database manager/project manager, the digital initiatives manager, the collections manager, and the technical services manager. From the selection of Axiell as the vendor to the finalization of the CMS, DAMS integration, and online collection website projects, presenters will describe the successes and pitfalls they encountered throughout. We will discuss facets including the intricacies of data migration, how different museum departments contributed, the challenges of migrating to a more integrated catalog, the staff training environment, the experience as the first North American institution to adopt Axiell Arena as their OPAC, etc., all with a special New Orleans flair. |
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| Bridging Continents: Loans, Collaboration, and Partnership with Museums and Institutions in Africa | Amid worldwide scrutiny of museum restitution practices and discussions about the restitution and/or repatriation of cultural heritage objects to source countries, museums are also successfully lending and borrowing with African museums and institutions. In this session, panelists will share their experiences working collaboratively with African countries, covering loan negotiations, courier arrangements, insurance, art transportation, packing standards, communication best practices, and reciprocity. Registrars and shipping partners will discuss how they negotiated challenges, both cultural and economic, and forged strong connections with Africa-based colleagues and museums, encouraging momentum for more collaborative cultural exchange in the future. |
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C |
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| Can I Just See...? Object Movements and Organization from Offsite Storage | The Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University underwent a major renovation between 2017-2019. As a result of this renovation, for the first time in its history, the majority of the collection is now stored offsite. As a result, policies and procedures for access, movement, care, and viewing of objects needed to be updated. This talk will discuss how the Eskenazi Museum of Art manages the access and movement of art for collection rotations, exhibitions, loans, research, and class viewings while maintaining the care and safety of the collection. |
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I |
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| "I make my parlor orderly" - Creating a Comprehensive Baseline Catalog at the Emily Dickinson Museum | The Emily Dickinson Museum embarked on a 3-year grant-funded project to catalog and photograph its collections for the first time. The collection has over 8,000 objects and, like a typical historic house museum, includes works on paper, furniture, textiles, general household objects, ceramics, silver, and more, which were left in situ after the death of the Dickinson family’s last heir. Prior to this project, the collections were largely undocumented and inaccessible for interpretive, educational, and research purposes. This project created skeletal records and photographs for each object with the intent to publish the database on the museum's website. This session will cover how a small, semi-rural museum received grant support, hired project staff during the pandemic, and successfully tackled an unmanaged collection. |
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L |
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| Leveraging AI Image Recognition for Increased Accessibility and Searchability of Museum Collections. (A Mead Art Museum Case Study) | Artificial intelligence (AI) has brought about a revolution in various fields, including the arts and culture sector. This session aims to explore the potential of AI image recognition programs in enhancing museum collections. The search for specific items in large museum collections can be a tedious and daunting task. AI image recognition programs offer an efficient way of identifying and tagging items in museum collections. In this session, we will discuss the availability, effectiveness, and challenges of using AI image recognition programs in the context of academic museum collections. The Mead Art Museum case study will be used as a reference to showcase the role that student interns can play in implementing these programs. They provide valuable support in identifying and cataloging items in museum collections and training the AI image recognition programs. The session will also address ethical considerations surrounding the use of AI image recognition programs in the arts and culture sector. We will discuss issues of data privacy, bias, and cultural sensitivity, and best practices for mitigating these issues. The session will provide a forum for exploring the intersection of AI technology and museum collections, and the benefits of incorporating experiential learning methodology in museum education programs. |
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| Lights Up - making exhibitions accessible | Hear about Wellcome Collection’s approach to inclusive exhibition design, and how it was implemented in the recent exhibition, ‘In Plain Sight’ which was designed with and for blind and partially sighted people. The exhibition explored the different ways we see, and the tools that shape how we view the world. We trialled new ways for our visitors to experience the exhibition that engaged a number of senses and was more accessible, from a tactile floor line guiding visitors around the gallery, invitations to touch artworks on open display and Lights Up sessions with brighter and more even lighting conditions. |
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M |
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| Manifesting Momentum in the Workplace | What does it mean to lead as a registrar or collection manager? Our roles are often assumed to be positions that support other staff or departments, and what we do isn't always well understood by colleagues or the public. How do we communicate effectively about our achievements, as individuals, as advocates for our teams, and for our profession? A panel discussion with registrars/collection managers who hold leadership roles, the panelists will discuss how they advanced in their careers to management positions. This session will focus on how registrars and collection managers can better "market" ourselves and our work, create support for procedures, policies, staffing and budget - and talk about what obstacles we may face. |
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| Moving Diego Rivera’s Pan American Unity: Lessons Learned on a Monumental Scale | Over three years, an interdisciplinary group of experts came together to solve the challenge of relocating the monumental Diego Rivera mural Pan American Unity. The mural was designed as portable fresco panels which were subsequently permanently embedded in a concrete wall. Safe removal of the artwork emerged through a collaborative process to share, develop, and test ideas in advance of deinstalling, reinforcing, moving, and reinstalling this fragile Rivera masterpiece. Learn how a resilient, flexible group of stakeholders and specialized experts successfully completed an impossible project by sharing risk and creating a culture that brought out the best work from all. |
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| Moving heavy and monumental works of Art | The challenges of moving heavy and monumental works of art. How to organize this kind of projects? The check-list for a perfect work. Handling difficult access points. What kind of handling equipment is used for these projects? Focus on several examples. 1/ How to move a monumental roman sculpture: the Melpomene at Louvre Museum. 2/ How to manage the moving of monumental paintings in a dangerous race against time: saving the paintings of Notre Dame Cathedral. 3/ Moving a world superstar with thousands of journalists: the restauration of the Victory of Samothrace at Louvre Museum. 4/ How to move works of art that doesn’t fit with the doors of the museum: moving the collection of historical boats and ship model of the Maritime Museum in Paris. 5/ How to move works of art from nowhere: when helicopters make fly heavy sculptures. |
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N |
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| Not a Drill: A Rapid Collections Move Driven by Fire Safety | I aim to present a case study looking at how the College of Physicians of Philadelphia planned and implemented a series of collections moves and space renovations in a short period of time, for the sake of improving our compliance with fire code - with the knock on benefit of improving our collections storage. To include a post-mortem and lessons learned. |
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| Not a One-Size-Fits-All Approach: Customizing Fine Art Insurance Risk Transfer for Your Museum | Museums large and small, public and private, contemporary and ancient, have vastly different ways of addressing risk transfer for their permanent collection and temporary loans. Some museums purchase 100% insurance to value, while others opt out of insurance altogether. So how do museums know how much fine art insurance to purchase? What factors do museums assess when analyzing their levels of collection and loans insurance? Join us as museum and insurance professionals provide a historical overview on how museums approach fine art insurance, what headwind impact levels of coverage, and examine different coverage methodologies for collections, loans, and traveling exhibitions. This session will equip participants with the tools needed to develop a customized fine art insurance strategy for your museum and take your museum's risk management to the next level. |
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R |
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| Repatriation and Change: How the ethical return of objects can create momentum for institutional change | As the call for museums to pursue repatriation continues to make headlines, this session seeks to explore how the act of ethical return can be a catalyst for change at an intuitional level. In 2022, the Indianapolis Museum of Art returned sacred vigango statues to their owners, the Mijikenda people, in Kenya. This experience helped prompt the institution to grapple with a long overdue reconciliation of ethics, policy, and collection practices. Attendees will learn how this example of repatriation was implemented, including discussion of relationship building with community stakeholders, shipping logistics, and deaccession, as well as the lessons learned that galvanized change. |
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| Repatriation and Restitution: Success Stories and Steps for Returning Home | What are some basic steps for returning objects to an individual, community, culture, or state? Are we able to identify procedural commonalities when these cases are so unique and complex? Hear from three experts who will address their evolving work on repatriation and restitution projects from diverse collections. Learn how they navigated various sets of laws and problem solved to reach successful conclusions. Laura Elliff Cruz will offer repatriation policy planning, database flagging, Guidelines for Collaboration highlights, and a brief example of returning Indigenous cultural items back to communities under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Karen Daley will describe the basic steps and her teamwork approach for returning a Nazi-era object and some lessons learned. Stephen E. Nash will describe the serendipity, planning, and perseverance that led to the successful return of dozens of vigango, or ancestor-memorial poles, from several U.S. museums to the National Museums of Kenya and then, ultimately and in future, to the Mijikenda tribes of coastal Kenya. While each case has its own difficulties, the speakers will emphasize the importance of repatriation and restitution projects and the commonalities necessary to manage these delicate situations, which will help collection stewards begin the process of returning cultural objects to their respective homelands. |
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| Responding Creatively to Public Art Theft | Public art has the ability to provide a sense of belonging, increase cultural, social, and economic value within our neighbourhoods, as well as reflect and reveal our communities identities. It matters because it can be used as a tool for growth and sustainability, helping communities to thrive economically while also directly influencing how individuals and groups see and connect with a place. This means that the damage, destruction, or theft of public art has the potential to negatively impact members of the community. It can feel like a personal violation or a loss for the community as a whole. As theft of bronze artworks continues to rise in alarming frequency, it is clear that public art collections need to adapt in order preserve their significant role in placemaking and protect those artworks under their care. This session will outline the creative response undertaken by the Visual Arts team with the City of St. Albert in Alberta, Canada. Conducting a thorough review of installation methods, fostering a network of partnerships, and embarking on an extensive community awareness campaign, the City of St. Albert’s Public Art Collection presents an innovative case study for potential theft mitigation and response. |
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| Rethinking Collections Stewardship: Incorporating Indigenous Care Considerations | For centuries, museums and academic institutions have acquired and amassed Indigenous cultural items for their own use and benefit with minimal consideration from descendant communities. The Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) Working Group was established in 2021 to advocate for approaches that privilege Native American knowledge and center concepts of culturally appropriate care for items in museum collections. To meet these goals, the ICC Working Group is creating a Guide, which will be a reference tool for institutions that interact regularly with indigenous collections. The Guide will not teach museums how to specifically care for each item, since these vary among each community. It will instead offer achievable considerations and templates for implementation, advocacy, and creation of policies and procedures. This Guide does not replace consultation or the repatriation process – instead, it is meant to help guide those conversations and provide a framework. Members of the Indigenous Collections Care Working Group will discuss some of the foundational concepts of the Guide's content and current development. Attendees will understand the value and importance of culturally appropriate care, how the values expressed in collections stewardship resonate throughout an entire institution, and a pathway of how to incorporate these values into their daily work. |
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S |
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| #StewardshipMonday : Using Social Media to Change Institutional Perception | Embracing a leadership change mid-pandemic, the Rosenbach Museum & Library collections department used their personal social medial channels to positively change the institutional perception that collections are anything but stodgy and boring. This case study will highlight how our team dedicates Monday afternoons to 6 specific stewardship activities related to our strategic plan and uses images of our work along with the hashtag #StewardshipMonday on social media as an opportunity to educate our board and stakeholders about the importance of stewardship and best practices. By highlighting the unseen (and, therefore unacknowledged) work that goes on behind the scenes, showcasing the “discovery” of lesser-known objects and reframing the collections as the base for our programs, we have recast the collections team as lively and curious. This simple, cost-effective, and low-pressure approach has brought in new visitors (who also became members), engaged our staff and board, has led to a collections-specific monthly eblast, and has documented how our team of 5 is meeting our strategic goals. |
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T |
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| Taking Care: Collection Support Studio at the Henry Art Gallery | "The collections and exhibitions teams at the Henry Art Gallery recently collaborated on Taking Care: Collection Support Studio. Originally spurred by the necessity of removing works from an auxiliary storage space while installing new furniture, we took this opportunity to engage visitors with rarely-seen works, carry out vital collections work, and educate visitors about that work. We filled our largest gallery with 103 works from our collection and built a workspace in the gallery where the works were photographed, their condition assessed, and their cataloguing updated. Once a work had been processed it was returned to storage, the walls slowly emptying and visually marking our progress throughout the summer. Although we completed the work on days the galleries were closed, we shared our processes through videos in the gallery and online, a series of panel conversations, and a library of resource materials and tools available for perusal. Through this project we introduced people to collections work who knew little about it before, shared with the public how we care for the works in our trust, and addressed inequity in terms of data and accessibility." |
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W |
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| What’s Yours is Mine… Except When It’s Not: The State of Fair Use and Museum Practice | This 30-minute session will discuss the doctrine of fair use of copyrighted material in today’s changing legal and ethical landscape. Museums often rely on fair use without fully understanding its limitations or legal foundation. This session aims to give a quick and dirty overview of the concept from a legal perspective, including relevant court decisions and reasoning. Using current cases, including Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, and data compiled from the U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index, the relationship between use of copyrighted material and educational institutions will be broken down. Additionally, the new Copyright Claims Board and its potential impact on institutions will be discussed. By the end of the session, participants should have a clearer understanding of the limits of fair use and feel comfortable applying it within their institutional practices. |
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| When the Wrecking Balls are Coming: Relocating 100,000 Works on Paper | In March 2020 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art completed the inventory and relocation of the museum’s art collection in preparation for a major construction project. Although LACMA’s encyclopedic collection includes paintings, sculpture, textiles, etc., this proposed session focuses on works on paper. Nearly all of the 15 curatorial departments at LACMA collect works on paper, and the works on paper holdings range in date from the 8th century to 2022. Artworks range in size from just a couple of inches to 12 x 15 feet, and the collection totals about 110,000 items. During a 30 minute session Sarah Newby, associate collections manager, works on paper, and Catherine Burce, senior associate collections manager will present an overview of LACMA’s 2019-2020 works on paper move with practical tips for beginning the planning process, evaluating a widely varied works on paper collection for a move, identifying potential hurdles, maintaining flexibility and momentum during schedule changes, and strategies for relocating oversized and particularly vulnerable works on paper. The goal of the session is to provide others with a broad, but clear understanding of how one may plan for and complete a large scale works on paper move. |
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| Whose Afraid of Outdoor Sculpture? | Nearly every museum exhibits sculptures outdoors, from large collections of public art to a few carefully placed works around the grounds. However, unless it is the museum’s primary focus, many collection managers struggle to understand the fairly simple and cost effective ways to maintain these works. A well thought out seasonal schedule of preventative care can allow museums to avoid more costly conservation treatments in the future. Maintenance programs can easily be tailored to collections, budgets, and importantly, staff of any size. Grounds For Sculpture displays more than 300 contemporary works across the grounds all year round. In this 30 minute session, Faith McClellan, Director of Collections and Exhibitions for Grounds For Sculpture, will share the basic methods of collection care for various sculptural materials, including what treatments are completed annually and a materials list for supplies; what to look for in terms of condition assessment issues; how to start a pilot program for volunteer support; long-range conservation planning to forecasts future needs. |
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