Scaling Back With Successful Impact
Live Webinar
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
2 - 3 pm ET

Description

The Scaling Back With Successful Impact webinar addressed ways that curators and art organizations might scale back in successful ways. Large-scale exhibitions and multiple, quick changing exhibition/installation schedules often place considerable demands on an organization's staff and budget to meet the need to attract large audiences, leading funders, and media attention. Unfortunately this pace often has negative impact on staffing retention, morale and curatorial research. However, some art museums to reduce the pressure on staff and finances have turned to collection-based exhibitions and expanded show runs with positive results.  We asked questions about how some have found success in scaling back, and the methods they used in enacting those plans.

 

Meet the Speakers

Sandra Fraser, Curator (Collections), Remai Modern, Moderator
Srimoyee Mitra, Director, Stamps Gallery
Christine Mullen Kreamer, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution
Randall Suffolk, Director, High Museum of Art

Speakers
(listed alphabetically) 

Sandra Fraser, Curator (Collections), Remai Modern, Moderator

Sandra Fraser is Curator (Collections) at Remai Modern, set to open this fall in Saskatchewan, Canada. Here she oversees a collection of mainly modern and contemporary Canadian art, along with a comprehensive collection of Picasso linocuts. She was previously Acting Chief Curator and Associate Curator at the Mendel Art Gallery. Recent exhibitions include the Mendel’s 50th anniversary collection exhibition; a nationally touring retrospective of David Thauberger; and an innovative performing/drawing project in the sky with six contemporary artists and one stunt pilot. Fraser has published numerous essays and interviews, and advocates for the role that museums, artists and audiences play in the collaborative production of meaning and community. She plays an active role in the community, currently sitting as vice-chair of AKA artist-run gallery. Fraser has a Masters in Art History from York University, a certificate of Museum Management and Curatorship from Sir Sandford Fleming College, and a BA specializing in Art History from the University of Toronto. Before moving to the Canadian Prairies in 2010, she was Curator at the MacLaren Art Centre; taught Art History and Gallery Studies at Georgian College; and served as Programme Officer at the Ontario Association of Art Galleries.

Srimoyee Mitra, Director, Stamps Gallery

Srimoyee Mitra is a curator and writer whose work is invested in building empathy and mutual respect by bringing together meaningful and diverse works of art and design. She develops ambitious and socially relevant projects that mobilize the agency within creative practices and public audiences. Her research interests lie at the intersection of exhibition-making and participation, migration, globalization and decolonial aesthetics.

Mitra has worked as an Arts Writer for publications in India such as Time Out Mumbai and Art India Magazine. She was the Programming Co-ordinator of the South Asian Visual Arts Centre (2008-2010) in Toronto, where her curatorial projects included Crossing Lines: An Intercultural Dialogue at the Glenhyrst Art Gallery, Brantford. In 2011, she was appointed the Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Windsor, where she developed an award-winning curatorial and publications program. Her exhibitions Border Cultures (2013-2015), We Won’t Compete (2014), Wafaa Bilal: 168:01 (2016) were awarded “Exhibition of the Year” by the Ontario Association of Art Galleries for three consecutive years. In 2015, she edited a multi-authored book, Border Cultures, co-published by the Art Gallery of Windsor and Black Dog Publishing and her writing can be found in journals such as Scapegoat Journal, Fuse and C Magazines.

Recent conferences and lectures include Creating a Future, O’Kinadas Residency, Complicated Reconciliations, Faculty of Critical and Creative studies, University of British Columbia, August 2016; Unsettling Urban Spaces on Borderlands, Agnes Etherington Centre and Department of Film and Media, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, March 2016; Sensing Borders, Daniels Faculty University of Toronto, Proseminar Speakers Series, December, 2015 and Home on Border Lands, The University of Arizona School of Art, Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series, November 12, 2014.

Born and raised in Mumbai, Mitra lived in Canada and India before moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is currently the Director of Stamps Gallery, Stamps School of Art and Design.

Christine Mullen Kreamer, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

Christine Mullen Kreamer is deputy director and chief curator at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.  Her numerous exhibitions and publications explore art and ritual, gender, African systems of knowledge, and museum practice, and they bridge the disciplines of art history, anthropology, and museum studies.  In addition to research in Togo and South Africa, she has worked on museum exhibition and training projects in Ghana and Vietnam. She received her doctoral degree from Indiana University.  In addition to articles and essays on traditional and contemporary African arts and museum practice, her more recent exhibitions and co-authored publications include Conversations: African and African American Artwork in Dialogue (2014); African Cosmos: Stellar Arts (2012); Lines, Marks, and Drawings: Through the Lens of Roger Ballen (2013); Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art (2007); and African Vision: The Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection (2007).  She is also a contributing author for an essay on connoisseurship in the 2014 edited volume Visions from the Forest: The Art of Liberia and Sierra Leone and two essays in the 2011 edited volume Representing Africa in American Art Museums (University of Washington Press, 2011).


Randall Suffolk, Director, High Museum of Art

 Randall Suffolk became the Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., Director of the High Museum of Art in November 2015. Prior to this appointment, Suffolk served as Director/President of the Philbrook Museum of Art (2007-2015).  While there, he championed the Museum’s renewed commitment to community engagement.  These efforts led to the reinstallation of 75% of the Museum’s permanent collection galleries; a 22% increase in membership; a 63% increase in attendance; and a dramatic change in visitor demographics – including five consecutive years with minority participation over 40% of total attendance.  In addition, Suffolk was instrumental in leading the development and opening of Philbrook Downtown (2013) – a 30,000 sq. ft. satellite facility that enhanced Philbrook’s presence in the community and region.  During his tenure, Philbrook added over 2700 works of art, representing 24% of the Museum’s permanent collection. 

From 1999-2007, Suffolk was the director of The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York. Suffolk’s focus included building constituency (attendance increased 65% and membership increased 41%); overseeing a museum expansion that tripled space dedicated to art and general storage, conservation, fabrication and staging; as well as guiding the award-winning restoration of historic Hyde House. He has curated over twenty-five exhibitions, and has served as a juror, panel member, or guest lecturer for a variety of art-related organizations and programs.  He has also served on the boards of numerous community and statewide non-profit organizations.  Suffolk earned a BA in English from Connecticut College, a MA in Higher Education Administration from Columbia University, and a MA in Art History from Bryn Mawr College. 

AAMC & AAMC Foundation's Webinar Program

AAMC Foundation offers webinars on essential skills, timely issues, and latest discoveries that define the profession of Art Curator and enhance understanding and development in the field, through online webinars. All of AAMC’s programming and overall efforts shall strive to be representative of diversity across fields of expertise, types of institutional mission, regional positions, and self-identifications (by nation, gender, creed, race) of participants. The more diverse our voices, the more dynamic our offerings.

Beginning in 2017, professional development webinars will be open to members and non-members through the AAMC Foundation with a registration fee. Access to the recordings of the webinars will be for registrants only for 12 months, and then will be open to the general public. The availability to purchase an archived recording will be available. Please visit our resource page to see an archive of past webinars and other information.