SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2015

SOTHEBY'S SPONSORED RECEPTION HOSTED AT THE NEWARK MUSEUM

Newark, NJ

Directions to follow.  

Please note no transportation to Newark will be provided.  However, AAMC will provide a shuttle bus to/from Newark, NJ Penn Station (note, not NYC Penn) and the Museum. 

AAMC Conference attendees and guests are invited to join us at a Sotheby's sponsored reception hosted at The Newark Museum.

MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015

Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY

Sessions will take place in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium

9:00 AM                                 

Welcome

ARNOLD LEHMAN, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director, Brooklyn Museum

Arnold Lehman has served as Director of the Brooklyn Museum, one of the oldest and largest fine arts collections in the nation, since 1997. His first official act as Director was to march in Brooklyn's West Indian Labor Day Parade. Since then, he has prioritized both the individual visitor's experience and the community’s engagement with the Museum (and the Museum's relevance to the community) through the presentation of innovative exhibitions and reinstallations of the permanent collection; highly successful public programs that address the diversity of the collection and the community; active support for and participation of Brooklyn-based artists; and an ongoing major capital program that has greatly enhanced the accessibility of the Museum and the preservation of its collections.

Prior to his leadership in Brooklyn, Dr. Lehman (Ph.D, M.Phil., Yale University) was Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art for almost two decades, and Adjunct Professor of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. He has served as the President of the Association of Art Museum Directors and, from 2008 to 2011, was the Chair of the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) of New York City, representing 33 major cultural institutions. He has since been reelected to the CIG position. In addition, he now serves as Co-Chair of the Arts and Culture Transition Committee for New York’s new Mayor.

9:30 AM                                 

AAMC Welcome & Keynote Introduction

EMILY BALLEW NEFF; AAMC President

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

TOM FINKELPEARL, Commissioner, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs

Tom Finkelpearl is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In this role he oversees city funding for nonprofit arts organizations across the five boroughs and directs the cultural policy for the City of New York. Prior to his appointment by Mayor Bill de Blasio, Commissioner Finkelpearl served as Executive Director of the Queens Museum for twelve years starting in 2002, overseeing an expansion that doubled the museum’s size and positioning the organization as a vibrant center for social engagement in nearby communities. He also held positions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, working on the organization’s merger with the Museum of Modern Art, and served as Director of the Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art program. Based on his public art experience and additional research, he published a book, Dialogues in Public Art (MIT Press), in 2000. His second book, What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation (Duke University Press, 2013) examines the activist, participatory, coauthored aesthetic experiences being created in contemporary art. He received a B.A. from Princeton University (1979) and an MFA from Hunter College (1983).  

11:00 AM – 12:30 PM

PANEL: Shaping Collections: Acquisitions and Institutional Priorities

Shaping collections is one of the great challenges and rewards of curatorial work. Increasingly, curators are charged with giving acquisitions a strategic focus and directing acquisitions towards broader institutional goals. Developing resources, building donor and trustee support, defining the relationship between acquisitions and existing collections, assessing markets and opportunities, and considering the connection between acquisitions and audiences are only some of the issues involved with the development of collections. 

Spanning a wide range of organizations, fields, and approaches, this session will invite members to consider models that embrace the idea that institutional collections should be shaped towards specific initiatives, even in some cases towards specific communities. The issues involved will engage curators with collection-development responsibilities on a variety of scales and in any field. In discussing their initiatives and projects, panelists will address the relationship between acquisitions and broader institutional activities. The questions raised have wide application: How can strategic acquisitions reintroduce and revitalize long-standing institutional priorities? Can the introduction of a new emphasis on acquisition works by global, emerging, or racially and ethnically diverse artists have an impact on the expansion and diversification of audience? How can income from judicious deaccessions be used successfully to redirect collecting priorities? How can cross-collection/collaborative acquisition initiatives heighten the visibility of institution-wide collecting goals? Can the acquisition of individual destination objects have an impact on programmatic goals? When, why and how should institutions consider the redirection of their collecting priorities?

Organizer

TERESA A. CARBONE, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art and Managing Curator, Arts of the Americas and Europe, Brooklyn Museum; AAMC Conference Committee

Moderator & Panelist

RICHARD ASTE, Curator of European Art, Brooklyn Museum

Panelists

JANET BLYBERG,  Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Research & Publishing, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem

WENDY KAPLAN, Department Head and Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

RICHARD B. WOODWARD, Curator of African Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015

Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY

Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY

Sessions will take place in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium

2:00 PM – 2:30 PM    

AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE PRESENTATION

MICHELLE HARGRAVE, Curator of Exhibitions, American Federation of Arts; AAMC Board of Trustees & Prize Committee

2:45 PM - 4:15 PM     

Case Study: Curators & Technology Initiatives

Technology is a common presence in museums today, and museums regularly put resources behind developing digital engagement tools to enhance the visitor experience. Such initiatives often have strong support from many parties, and in particular through Bloomberg Philanthropies and their Bloomberg Connects digital engagement initiative, which supports "the development of state-of-the-art technology, from mobile applications to immersive galleries and other dynamic tools, designed to transform the visitor experience, encouraging interaction and exploration of cultural institutions on and offsite.” Benefitting from this program are several New York City institutions, with each developing a project that speaks to the unique needs of their audiences.The session will tackle the motivation behind Bloomberg’s initiative and the importance of technology as they view it; provide case studies from museum representatives at three grantee institutions—Brooklyn Museum, Cooper Hewitt, and the American Museum of Natural History; and conclude with an open discussion on these projects and the curatorial role in developing technology initiatives.

Organizer

Sharon Matt Atkins, Vice Director for Exhibitions & Collections Management, Brooklyn Museum;AAMC Marketing & Communications Committee

Moderator & Panelist

KEVIN STAYTON, Chief Curator, Brooklyn Museum

Panelists
SAM BRENNER, Interactive Media Developer, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

RUTH COHEN, Senior Director, Education Strategic Initiatives, Director, Center for Lifelong Learning, American Museum of Natural History

CATHERINE DEVINE, Chief Digital Officer, American Museum of Natural History

SARA DEVINE, Manager of Audience Engagement & Interpretive Materials, Brooklyn Museum

GREG HERRINGSHAW, Assistant Curator in charge of Wallcoverings, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

MALIA SIMONDS, Bloomberg Philanthropies

4:15 PM – 5:00 PM    

MEMBERS’ MEETING & BOARD ELECTIONS

EMILY BALLEW NEFF, President, AAMC

JUDITH PINEIRO, Executive Director, AAMC

5:00 PM                                              

End of Sessions

TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2015

THE BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS

Sessions will take place in the Lower Gallery

Galleries will be open from 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM

9:30 AM                                 

WELCOME

ALLISON CHERNOW, Director of External Affairs, The Bronx Museum of the Arts

Allison Chernow is the Director of External Affairs at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, overseeing the Development and Communications departments. Previously, as Director of Development at the Katonah Museum of Art for seven years, she supervised fundraising, membership, marketing, and PR as well as special events and public programs. In her twelve years as Executive Producer of Cultural Programs at WNYC AM & FM, Chernow oversaw over 100 national and local broadcasts annually and was the principal liaison with major NYC cultural institutions. While at WNYC, she was awarded an Armstrong Radio Award, a Corporation for Public Broadcasting Arts and Humanities Award, and an American Women in Radio and Television Pinnacle Award. She received a B.A. from Brown University and an M.A. from New York University.  Chernow is currently on the Board of Directors for Rehabilitation Through the Arts, an innovative arts program working in five major prisons in New York State.

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM

PANEL: Is Moving Outside of the Museum Walls the 21st Century Sculpture Park?

Lately, more and more museums are reimagining their ideas of a sculpture park. In fact, they are reimagining what it means to be a public museum and this leads into showcasing works beyond the museum walls. "Engaging the community” and "audience building” are phrases constantly rolling off the tongues of museum directors, curators and educators. How do we meet the challenge of engaging a community? Enter: the 21^st Century sculpture park. Or should I say, exit the museum, please, and enter the sculpture park. Or, today it can be a park, university campus, or one can just drive-by a billboard. These are places where play is appropriate, touching is sometimes encouraged, and where "plop-art” is found but is perhaps rarer and much different than it once was. 

Organizer & Moderator

Rachel Adams, Associate Curator, UB Art Galleries, Buffalo, NY

Panelists

Andrée Bober, Director, Landmarks, University of Texas at Austin

Nora Lawrence, Curator, Storm King Art Center

Gordon Montgomery, Vice President, Marketing and Public Affairs

Art Institute of Chicago

Aaron Ott, Public Art Curator, Albright Knox Art Gallery

11:30 AM - 12:00 PM

CURATORIAL SLAMS: PART I

12:30 PM – 1:00 PM  

MENTORSHIP PROGRAM PRESENTATION

Andaleeb Badiee Banta, Curator of European and American Art, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College; AAMC Career Support Committee Co-Chair

TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2015

THE BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS

Sessions will take place in the Lower Gallery

Galleries will be open from 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM

2:15 PM – 3:45 PM    

Panel: Curatorial Practice and the Educational Turn

Recent museological trends over the past decade or so have seen a move towards audience participation in meaning construction as part of a broader educational turn in curation. Many museums are now shifting from the traditional model of the museum as primarily a place of interpretive display and stewards of collections to accommodate social interaction and showcase diverse forms of creativity. In some cases, the boundaries between the historically distinct professions of curator and educator have blurred; an especially apt example of this can be seen with the rise of the curator of public engagement.

This panel will explore the relationship between curating and education today, considering compelling examples of constructive practices from a range of museums. How is the curatorial role shifting or evolving in the education turn? What are constructive models for collaboration between curatorial and education in engaging audiences? How does interest in visitor experience and participatory projects impact the curatorial profession? How does the position of Engagement curator operate in an in-between state between curatorial, education, and audience? Museum professionals from diverse backgrounds will offer a range of approaches and perspectives on the subject.

Organizer & Moderator

CHRISTA CLARKE, Senior Curator, Arts of Global Africa, The Newark Museum; AAMC Vice President, Programs

Panelists

ALLISON AGSTEN, Curator of Public Engagement, Hammer Museum

NANCY BLOMBERG, Chief Curator and Curator of Native Arts, Denver Art Museum

DR. XERXES MAZDA, Deputy Director, Engagement, Royal Ontario Museum

3:45 PM – 4:15 PM    

CURATORIAL SLAMS: PART II

Presenters

Mark D. Mitchell, Associate Curator of American Art and Manager of the Center for American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Putting "Life" into American Still Life”

Renata Stein, Curator, Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, "Stepping Forward: The Leo Baeck Institute's Art Digitization Project”

Staci Steinberger, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts and Design, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "Hanging Out Our Sign: Building a New Graphic Design Collection at LACMA"

4:15 PM                                  

Closing Remarks & Thank you