We were excited to partner with CBMAA to bring Prep Con to a new region in the United States. Featuring a diverse collection of American art, and a commitment to exhibitions bringing women and BIPOC artists to the fore, the CBMAA is situated on 120 acres of lush Arkansas greenery traversed by a network of nature trails and art walks. The conference was held within the sweeping glass expanse of CBMAA’s Great Hall, designed by architect Moshe Safdie.
Conference Theme: Adaptation—it’s how living creatures have continued to survive, grow and thrive for eons of our shared history on Earth. Adaptation is a requirement in the face of a changing world, changing conditions, changing weather, changing knowledge. It’s through adaptation that we grow, and our corner of that world, art preparation and collections care, has had to adapt over and over to grow since our disciplines emerged as distinct within the realm of cultural preservation and exhibition.
May 12 MAIN SESSIONS:
Natalie Wadle (Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Spokane, WA)
Session: Handling Indigenous Materials; from Alaska to Massachusetts
Working in museums across the United States, focusing largely on indigenous materials, this session will discuss the different considerations needed while packing, displaying and storing these items. How to handle and care for an object in Alaska varies significantly from how you would handle the same object in Colorado, Massachusetts or Oklahoma. Many of the objects I will discuss have their own considerations, being made up of a mixture of materials, some more stable than others and requiring specific storage and display materials. Packing and displaying a long harpoon with a seal gut bladder in Alaska, vs how I would handle it in a dryer climate or how I would pack a cradle board in Colorado for offsite storage vs working with a selection of Fijian war clubs in Massachusetts and contemporary art pieces all utilize a similar skill set but require location specific considerations as well as cultural sensitivities.
Natalie Wadle is the Exhibitions Registrar at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. She has a background in collections as well as fabrication having worked for the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository in Kodiak, AK, the Denver Art Museum in Denver, CO and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. This built upon her background in art history with a BA from Iowa State University and then her graduate level work at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Wadle has worked with a wide variety of art and material culture items with an emphasis on native American materials.
Jennifer Iacovelli, Brynnea Irvine (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA)
Session: Costume Packing Best Practices: Permanent Storage vs. Touring Exhibition
As Collections Management Technicians specializing in the care of costume and textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), we spend much of our time ensuring that the items in our collection are properly housed. Concurrent with our regular responsibilities of preparing objects for storage, we recently packed all of the ensembles for LACMA’s upcoming touring exhibition Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse. We also packed two ensembles to be loaned to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas for their exhibition Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America. The undertaking of these projects highlighted the significant differences in how we prepare an object that will experience motion in transit versus how we approach packing an object to sit stationary on a shelf and in what we choose to pack together in a box.
Using objects from these two exhibitions as a case study, we will compare how the same ensembles would be packed for permanent storage and how they would be packed for travel. This presentation will illustrate how we make thoughtful decisions based on the needs of each individual object and will demonstrate how we use best practices techniques to ensure the safety of these objects.
Jennifer Iacovelli graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a B.F.A. in Studio Art and from New York University with an M.A. in Visual Culture: Costume Studies. Prior to LACMA she interned in the Costume and Textiles department at the Chicago History Museum and at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has been with LACMA since June 2016 when she joined the team to help inventory and rehouse the Costume and Textiles collection. She has helped to install and de-install such exhibitions as Reigning Men, Fashion in Menswear, 1715-2015 and Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage.
Brynnea Irvine obtained her B.A. in Anthropology (conc. Archaeology) from UCSD in 2016 and her M.A. in Fashion & Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice from FIT in 2021. Her interest in this field was initially sparked by serving as an exhibition installation volunteer at the FIDM Museum. She held internships at the Seattle Opera and the Robert & Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection at Drexel University. Brynnea was also the student curatorial liaison for the online exhibition "Max Meyer and A. Beller & Co.'' on FIT's SPARC Digital and a writer for the FIT graduate student exhibition “Eleanor Lambert: Empress of Seventh Avenue.”
Don McPhee (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA)
Quick Tip: Mannequin Storage Solutions
The Peabody Essex Museum, like many museums across the country, have expanded our inclusion of fashion in our exhibitions exponentially in the last 15 years. In turn, our collection management staff have gone from managing a stock of 20 or 30 mannequins to well over 200. What to do? Mannequins are an exhibition mount. The painted surface is of concern, but the mount itself is treated like props, wrapped with inexpensive packing materials, reusing shipping boxes or commercial bins to awkwardly pile forms together to convey them. All of this adds up to wasted one time use materials, or a struggle to maintain materials like bubble wrap for several uses. This amounts to a high cost in supplies and labor. To streamline the approach we’ve treated mannequins more like sculptures. We devised a slat crate into which we can strap six mannequins standing upright. With a single strap at the waist we fit the forms in a footprint of 48 x 30”. Accessories, arms, flanges, fit nicely in the base of the crate. We save time and materials in handling mannequins, and also provide a clear view of the form in storage when preparing for the next exhibit.
Don has worked in art handling and logistics for 20 years. He spent the last 6 years with the Peabody Essex Museum working on exhibitions prep, collection care, constant object moves, and lots of storage planning. Prior to this he worked for the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, Harvard Art Museums, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Don got his start in this work, like many others, working for Fine Arts Express in Boston for 9 years.
Eric Dixon (Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.),
Chris Hollshwander (Smithsonian Institution Exhibits, Landover, MD),
Jia-Sun Tsang (Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute)
Session: Modern and Contemporary Painting Preventative Conservation Through Design, Display, and Transit Mounting
Safely displaying, and transporting modern and contemporary paintings has never been a one-size-fits-all process. Within the Smithsonian Institution, a collaborative group has worked together to create solutions that emphasize the importance of modification and adaptation in building on examples of the past to advance the design of painting mount systems and fabricate innovative mounts for display and transit, to improve the protection and care for these paintings. This process and collaboration between Smithsonian units can best be highlighted in the discussion and presentation of the OneStep mount, ideal for protection in crating, shipping, and display, as well as with the Floating Panel display, focusing on security, protection, and aesthetics. These examples worked off existing techniques for object mounting that were repurposed and reworked for use with contemporary paintings. By adapting to the care of the painting with a collaborative team of motivated professionals, solutions can be achieved that help to further collection care and keep the presentation focused on the beauty, reverence, and importance of the artwork. In preventive conservation, adapting methods of the past that emphasize bringing together minds thinking outside of the box, to collaborate across units and sectors, can bring about amazing solutions.
Eric Dixon is the Exhibition Fabrication Supervisor for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Eric worked at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, Gettysburg College, the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC, and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. Eric studied History, specializing in Museum Studies and Theatre History from the University of Maryland University College and he studied Theatre Technology and Design at Brigham Young University. Eric specializes in design, fabrication, material selection, and management in fabrication processes across the cultural arts.
Chris Hollshwander graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, with a degree in Industrial Design. Since 2003, he has been working for the Smithsonian Institution, as an Exhibits Specialist and Model Maker, focusing on model making, exhibit fabrication, and mount making. Prior career experience has been in the amusement park industry, as a fabricator/model maker. He has also worked in the toy industry building prototypes, and other models for most of the major toy companies, model maker for a major power tool/consumer product company, freelance mold maker, and architectural model maker.
Jia-sun Tsang is the senior painting conservator for Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute. Jia-sun specializes in modern and contemporary paintings conservation focusing on research, treatment, and preventive care. Since 2007, Jia-sun contributed to the conservation of paintings in the Visual Art collection of NMAAHC. Jia-sun published widely in scholarly journals in conservation covering topics from the study of aging and degradation of paintings to pragmatic and practical solutions to the preventive care of paintings in display and transport. Jia-sun received M.S. in conservation from the Winterthur Conservation Program and M.S. in chemistry. Prior to conservation, Jia-sun worked as a clinical chemist.
Jerry Smith (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, CA)
Quick Tip: Grassroots Green: Growing and Maintaining Sustainability Efforts in Everyday Museum Work
The activities required for the preservation of material culture are often at odds with the goals of sustainability. The liberal use of plastics, foams and other environmentally unfriendly materials, not to mention the resources needed to maintain climate control in storage areas and galleries, leave many of us feeling as though we are part of the problem with little recourse to immediate solutions. However, there are ways to start working on grassroots sustainability efforts in the course of daily work activities. Jerry led a sustainability committee based in the Collections Management, Art Preparation and Installation, and Conservation departments at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that tackled these issues to work to promote recycling and reuse, reduction of material use and rethinking everyday work processes to make the museum more sustainable.
Jerry Smith works as Associate Collections Manager at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. They have an M.A. in Museum Studies from the University of Washington, and a B.A. in Anthropology from Colorado State University. Previous positions include Sr. Collections Management Technician at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Assistant Registrar at America’s Car Museum in Tacoma, WA, and laboratory manager for a National Geographic archaeological expedition in Honduras. Jerry enjoys working with any object that tells a story of human experience, with a special interest in the care, restoration and conservation of motor vehicles in museums.
Bryan Cain (Atthowe Fine Art Services, Oakland, CA)
Session: Converting a Legacy Fine Art Handling Corporation to an Employee-owned Cooperative: How a Complicated Challenge Can Create Strength
On the eve of our founder, Scott Atthowe’s retirement in 2019, Atthowe Fine Art Services began the process of becoming an employee-owned cooperative. The transition and sale of a legacy corporation is an opera of adaptation in and of itself, and during the pandemic extra roadblocks were added. This brief talk will attempt to give a bit of background, identify conditions needed, mention the major players, and give a quick blow by blow description of the process. Finally, a few lessons learned, and a description of the resulting benefits will finish up the presentation.
Bryan Cain is a graduate of Ohio State University with a degree in sculpture. He entered the field of art handling and transportation at Fine Art Transportation Services (F.A.T.S.), a not-for- profit service in Columbus, Ohio. After moving to San Francisco, he joined Atthowe Fine Art Services. During his tenure at Atthowe he helped developed the company’s ability to handle large, complicated installations and moves. Atthowe’s leadership was recently demonstrated in the move of Diego Rivera’s monumental mural “Pan American Unity.” Bryan participated in the conversion of Atthowe Fine Art Services to an employee-owned cooperative and is now its first CEO.
GROUP ONE SESSIONS: GREAT HALL
Julia Latané (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA)
Session: Rigging Case Study: A Lifting Fixture for Ai Weiwei's Zodiac Heads
This case study will cover designing, fabricating, and testing a compression lifting fixture to upright, install, and move Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads. The artwork consists of twelve bronze sculptures, each of an animal head on a narrow stem that rises vertically from a base. Though this work has been installed using slings around the heads, we fabricated a fixture to enable us to lift the pieces from the stems instead of from the heads. This enabled us to handle each piece in the same manner, have greater control over their movement, and better protect the thin patina from wearing through. It also gave the team an opportunity to develop metalworking skills in-house, and gain an in-depth understanding of how compression fixtures work. Viewers will see the process from design through mock-ups, fabrication, testing, using the fixture to upright and install the pieces, and then moving the pieces to a different location.
Julia Latané is Head of Art Preparation & Installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She was previously Head Preparator at The Broad and the Autry Museum. For over 20 years, Ms. Latané has built and installed exhibitions in museums and galleries. She founded the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson in 1997, served as President of the Board, and curated the inaugural exhibitions. Before working in museums, Julia worked in construction and studied sculpture. She regularly speaks at conferences and workshops on creating equitable and inclusive workplaces and on the technical aspects of being an art handler.
Natalie Cothren (Acumen International, Los Angeles, CA)
Session: The Nuances and Intricacies of Site-Specific Rigging
While it feels dismissive to distill the bulk of what we do down to “picking things up and putting them down”, thinking of the movement of sculptures in this colloquial way assists with managing the end goal of following best practices for the artwork, safety for the crews and the ever-fluid moving target of client expectations. Idyllic conditions are rare and as such, adapting industry standard equipment to meet those conditions is a necessity. This concept is particularly applicable to site-specific jobs but can also be a functional way to approach institutional jobs. Using examples ranging from large scale hanging mobiles to pre-war concrete reliefs and sculptures, the aim of this presentation is for the listener to build on their own experiences with the introduction of additional rigging examples, specifications as it pertains to those jobs, and inspire some practical ways of implementing thinking outside the crate.
Natalie Cothren is the co-managing partner of Acumen International Los Angeles. She has a BA in English from Lafayette College and pursued her MA in Art Theory at SUNY Stonybrook in New York. While she grew appreciating Claus Oldenburg’s Inverted Q at the Akron Art Museum, her first industry job was at Christie’s moving furniture. She was moved to private sales where they concentrated on post-war and contemporary art, and became the first female in Christie’s art handling union. Natalie moved from New York to Los Angeles in 2015 where she helped establish Acumen International’s LA branch alongside Dyer Norrington.
Christopher Moreland (St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO)
Quick Tip: El Anatsui “Fading Cloth” Installation Modification
Adapting from several iterations of installation procedures over time, we developed and fabricated a custom installation system for the Saint Louis Art Museum’s El Anatsui “Fading Cloth”. This helps us to better control the object and provide a safer installation; including the utilization of common handling equipment, with a bit of re-design, that could be useful in many instances.
Christopher Moreland is the Head of Art Preparation and Installation at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Chris has worked as a preparator at the museum since 2009, became Head Preparator in 2016 and in 2018, developed Art Preparation & Installation (API) as an autonomous department within the museum. He facilitates all artwork movement, installations and exhibitions, and management of collections storage for the campus. His role also includes project management, scheduling, implementation, and oversight in the museum’s permanent collection galleries for conservation rotations and multiple gallery special Installations. Recently Chris led stakeholders through demo and renovation of five galleries – to complete the re-installation of the museum’s new Oceanic and Australian art galleries which opened mid-2021, along with other special Installation projects through 2022: Oliver Lee Jackson, Masterpieces of 18th Century English Silver, Pablo Picasso, Shifting Perspectives: New Views on American Landscape, and Memory Painting: Helen LaFrance and the American Landscape.
Roger Machin and Ryan Campagna (Methods & Materials, Inc., Chicago, IL),
Todd Rennie (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR)
Session: Is a Mini Crane in Your Future?
Most of us in the art rigging business are by now familiar with mini cranes, commonly known as “spydercranes”. The machines have a starting weight of 2,000 pounds, easily fit through a standard door and can even traverse shallow stairs: An Art Rigger’s Dream. In August of 2021, Methods & Materials disassembled the 50ft diameter Fly’s Eye Dome at Crystal Bridges, moving the piece and reassembling it on campus to allow for future expansion of the museum. The mini crane allowed us to do all of the work ourselves—no crane operator necessary. It also made installation more practical: we were able to build the dome from the inside out, then drove the mini crane out through the human-sized entrance when finished. Our presentation is designed to familiarize the preparator with the ease of use of the smaller units, what they cost, and how the mini crane has benefited our relationships with clients—museums, galleries—through its convenience, cost and versatility.
Roger has been the Director of Field Operations for Chicago-based Methods & Materials for the past 30 years. He is a former ironworker with an M.F.A. in sculpture and has taught rigging at various institutions across the country with his course Don’t Sweat the Big Stuff. He is a proud member of PACCIN.
Pursuant of a career more focused within the Arts, Ryan began working with Methods & Materials in 2016. With a background in Environmental Project Management and General Construction he has been able to run up the ladder with Methods & Materials from General Field operations to Project Manager/Estimator within the last five years.
Todd Rennie received a B.F.A. in Photography and Art History from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007. From 2007-2009, he worked as a freelance preparator for the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, then for Prospect New Orleans. From 2009-2018, Todd was a preparator on staff at New Orleans Museum of Art. In New Orleans, Todd also served on the board of the New Orleans Photo Alliance, organizing exhibitions at the Alliance’s gallery space and for PhotoNOLA, an annual photography conference. Since 2018, Todd has held the position of Head Preparator at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
GROUP TWO SESSIONS: BELLOWS AND CASSATT ROOMS
Dale Benson (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX)
Session: New Building, Pandemic, Two Months: Houston, We Have a Problem!
For those having had the opportunity to be involved with a museum expansion soon realized the
importance of planning. Effective project planning is paramount when millions of dollars are being raised, countless contractors and contracts being negotiated . . . .and the clock is ticking. Such was the case for myself shortly after being hired at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in 2010. Two years into my tenure as Chief Preparator, I learned of the museum’s capital campaign initiative to raise funds for a new building to showcase its ever growing modern and contemporary collection. As project planning ensued, so did the full understanding of just how massive this undertaking was becoming along with my responsibility to safely (and timely) install hundreds of art works.
As building construction neared the homestretch in early 2020 and my strategy for installing all the art continued to be refined, we all learned of a world-wide pandemic. The nation went into lock-down and everything we had been planning for the last 8 years was in jeopardy.
It is my hope to highlight some of the challenges we faced during those very uncertain times and how we adapted/overcame unprecedented obstacles. Ultimately, we successfully installed the $476 million dollar, 237,213 sq ft Nancy and Rich Kinder Building in less than two months. It was the nation’s largest cultural construction project in nearly a decade.
Dale Benson has been working in museums since receiving his MFA from the University of Kansas in 1991. He is currently managing the Preparations Department at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston where he has been 12 years. Previously, he worked 2 years at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado and 16 years at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Campus expansions with new art buildings seem to follow Dale. Notable involvements include the Nelson-Atkins’ 165,000 sq ft Bloch Building expansion which opened its doors in 2007. More recently, in the fall of 2020, Dale and his team installed MFAH’s new 237,000 sq ft Nancy and Rich Kinder building featuring three atriums, fifteen galleries, eight site-specific art commissions, and two underground art immersive pedestrian tunnels. The new building increased the museum’s exhibition space by 75 percent.
Anthony Teneralli (University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY)
Session: From Preparator to Digital Preparator: Helping Keep the Museum Open When the Doors Are Closed
Problem solving is one of the major components of being a preparator. How do you get the job done in a timely manner with a tiny budget? With a global pandemic raging we were forced to figure out how to still engage our university community and our statewide audience while our doors were closed. At the University of Wyoming Art Museum, we have a small team which means we do a lot of collaboration with curatorial, collections, and educational staff as well as other campus departments. One major challenge that we were faced with was how do we still engage with our campus community while our doors are closed. How do you bring art to students to discuss via Zoom, will it still be a worthwhile experience? What are the challenges of digital engagement and how do you create an experience that is worthwhile? What steps can a small museum take to make our collection more accessible? What can a preparator do to help solve some of these problems? Through the formation of the Digital Engagement Team, we managed to problem solve and try our hand at answering those questions.
Born and raised in New Jersey, I left the East Coast at 19 and never looked back. A cowboy at heart, I’ve called the Mountain West home ever since attending the University of Wyoming and graduating with an emphasis in Sculpture and Graphic Design. After a 10-year stint in Colorado pursuing a career in Graphic Design and Public Art fabrication and maintenance I transitioned to museum work. In 2016 I was very fortunate to join the team at the University of Wyoming Art Museum as Collections Preparator.
Lindsay Davis (North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, NC)
Quick Tip: Out With the Old, In With the New
This quick presentation will focus on thinking outside the box when it comes to challenging exhibit changes. By working with the strengths of your team, and some creative thinking, anything can be done.
Lindsay began her museum career ten years ago as an intern at the Texas Military Forces Museum in Austin, TX. After three years, she began work as an exhibit technician at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. Then, it was on to a new city and a new museum, the Betchler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte, NC. While there, Lindsay oversaw multiple installations as Exhibition Manager. During her time there, she was fortunate enough to receive the PACCIN scholarship to attend the PrepCon conference in Amsterdam. Since then, she has moved to the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, NC where she wears multiple exhibit hats.
Gerardo “Shorty” Arciniega, Jasmine Tibayan
(Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA)
Session: The Longest Installation in the World: Installing LACMA’s Modern Art Exhibition During COVID-19 from January to May, 2021
This presentation will provide an overview of how LACMA’s Art Preparation and Installation department installed the Modern Art exhibition while adapting to the changing landscape of LACMA’s main campus due to construction and the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Preparators Gerardo Arciniega and Jasmine Tibayan will share their team’s strategies for limiting exposure to and transmission of COVID-19, establishing and maintaining safety protocols, and encouraging open communication about how we were actually doing. Topics that will be discussed include: introducing a buddy or pod system, using PPE and physical distancing, disinfecting equipment and tools, adjusting to supply chain interruptions, and, ultimately, creating safe spaces (figuratively and literally) to move forward against all obstacles. The account broadly covers events occurring between 2018 and 2022, but is intended to specifically highlight the five-month installation of the exhibition between January and May 2021.
Gerardo “Shorty” Arciniega has almost 20 years of experience as an art preparator. Shorty began his career with ProPack, an art shipping company based out of Los Angeles, transporting and installing art in private homes and art institutions for 11 years. In 2010, he accepted a position as a Senior Art Preparator with the Art Preparation & Installation (API) department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Shorty considers himself a hands-on person and enjoys installing artwork with the exhibitions team. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family, playing softball, and working on cars.
Jasmine Tibayan self-identifies as a woman, a second generation Asian-American with a mixed background, and an emerging museum professional with five years experience in art handling. She is a graduate of The Broad’s Diversity Apprenticeship Program. In April 2020, Tibayan joined LACMA's Art Preparation and Installation (API) department as a full-time art preparator. Outside of LACMA, Tibayan serves on the Programs Committee with the PACCIN. In her free time, she enjoys listening to audiobooks and podcasts, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending time with her loved ones.
May 13 MAIN SESSIONS:
Alissa Anderson (Swedish National Heritage Board, Stockholm, SE),
Pär Lindblom (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, SE)
Session: Art Handling in Sweden – Recognising a Crucial Activity
This presentation draws a picture of Art Handling as a professional activity in Sweden. We will focus on networking and professional collaborations, and explain the importance of recognition for Art Handling practice by national institutions, such as Nationalmuseum and Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet, RAÄ). Nationalmuseum is the national museum for art and design in Sweden. Here, Art Handling is an integrated part of everyday work. The museum is in the process of finding ways of supporting regional museums and public art galleries in Art Handling through networking and occasional practical workshops on packing and techniques. The museum also has an advisory role. RAÄ is the central administrative agency for protection, promotion and development of cultural heritage in Sweden. Among other assignments, RAÄ facilitates collaboration between different parties and supports museums and other institutions in Sweden in method development.
Alissa Anderson is an adviser in collection management at the Swedish National Heritage Board. She has her background in conservation of works of art in museum collections as well as in the private domain. As a conservator she sees the importance of a museum's commitment to the professionalism in art handling for the preservation and the sustainable use of cultural heritage and art.
Pär Lindblom is Head of the Art Handling Unit at Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree and has been working as an art handler since 1997 at Nationalmuseum. For the last 7 years he has been the head of the unit.
George Luna-Peña (The Broad, Los Angeles, CA),
Julia Latané (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA)
Session: Diversity Apprenticeship Program Toolbox: Supporting a Diverse Workforce
In this presentation, we’ll share a critical new resource for the field: the Diversity Apprenticeship Program Toolbox. The DAP Toolbox features an introduction to the history and structure of the DAP – an initiative to diversify the art handling field – and a toolbox to share best practices, lessons learned, and resources for art handling and to help install similar programs at institutions nationwide. We’ll cover the major sections of the toolbox, how to use it, and key takeaways from the program.
George Luna-Peña serves as the Program Director for the Diversity Apprenticeship Program (DAP) at The Broad in Los Angeles, CA. Before joining The Broad, he was the Research Manager for the Media and Participatory Politics Group at the University of Southern California and the Special Projects Coordinator at Generation Justice. He earned an M.A. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and a B.A. in Latin American History from U.C. Riverside.
Julia Latané is Head of Art Preparation & Installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She was previously Head Preparator at The Broad and the Autry Museum. For over 20 years, Ms. Latané has built and installed exhibitions in museums and galleries. She founded the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson in 1997, served as President of the Board, and curated the inaugural exhibitions. Before working in museums, Julia worked in construction and studied sculpture. She regularly speaks at conferences and workshops on creating equitable and inclusive workplaces and on the technical aspects of being an art handler.
Jeremiah Morris, George Luna-Peña (The Broad, Los Angeles, CA)
Desirèe Monique (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR)
Jasmine Tibayan (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA)
Session: Challenging Minds, Challenging Voices: Experiences of Emerging Preparators from the Diversity Apprenticeship Program
In recent years, initiatives to diversify museum staff have become incredibly popular. But what makes these initiatives impactful and meaningful? What challenges and insights do participants within diversity programs in this field encounter? Touching on their experiences in the Diversity Apprenticeship Program (DAP) — an innovative initiative by The Broad to diversify the field of art handling — three emerging preparators share their thoughts on creating a more equitable field. As participants in the DAP, these 3 individuals are uniquely positioned to share their insights for other preparators and museum professionals. Topics discussed include successes, challenges, and key lessons learned as they relate to equity and inequities in the field.
Jeremiah Morris is 28 years old, he was born and raised in Southern and Central Virginia. He has two loving parents George and Mabel Morris as well as two brothers, Zack and David. Jeremiah is a self-taught artist who has been based in Los Angeles, CA since 2020. He works with different mediums to create figurative and abstract paintings about himself, his family and the world around him.
Desirèe Monique is from Kansas City, Missouri. She is currently an Art preparator at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR & is a member of their Anti Racist Coalition (ARC). Desirèe is an Alumni of the Diversity Apprenticeship Program at the Broad in Los Angeles, CA and has worked in multiple museums & galleries in Los Angeles including LACMA, the Broad, the Autry, the Craft Contemporary & Art Bridges. She has experience within fabrication, metal working and conservation work. In her free time she is an avid farmer, exploratory artist & herbalist who holds intentions of collective care within her practice.
Jasmine Tibayan self-identifies as a woman, a second generation Asian-American with a mixed background, and an emerging museum professional with five years experience in art handling. She is a graduate of The Broad’s Diversity Apprenticeship Program. In April 2020, Tibayan joined LACMA's Art Preparation and Installation (API) department as a full-time art preparator. Outside of LACMA, Tibayan serves on the Programs Committee with the PACCIN. In her free time, she enjoys listening to audiobooks and podcasts, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending time with her loved ones.
Elizabeth K Mauro (Art Installation, LLC, Port Orchard, WA)
Quick Tip: “Sure, I Can Do That!”
Hear a tale of what happens when a seasoned art handler throws down her white gloves and challenges her demons in a fight to the finish.
Since 1991, Elizabeth K Mauro has completed over 1,000 installations for institutions, galleries, and private collectors through her business Art Installation, LLC. She has received professional training in principles of exhibition design, art handling and installation from nine different museums, and has been a long time preparator for several museums within the Puget Sound including the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Bellevue Arts Museum, and the Museum of Glass. After 30 years of installing art, she is finally taking a break, and is currently transitioning into providing instruction for a new generation of preparators.
Dave O’Ryan (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR)
Session: Re-installing Kūkā'ilimoku: Typical Issues in an Atypical Project
In 2019, Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) wished to reinstall an object that had spent several years in storage following an outgoing loan. This object was a large temple figure of the Hawaiian god Kūkā'ilimoku, the patron god of King Kamehameha I, and one of only three known examples remaining in the world. Despite the figure being in the collection and almost continuously exhibited for over 160 years, the team had to tackle issues old and new in order to complete this single-object installation project. Parts of PEM’s collecting history could be considered problematic by today’s standards, as could the institution’s historical place in the Western tradition of ethnographic modes of exhibiting non-Western artwork and cultural objects. This particular work presented an opportunity to show the strength of PEM’s commitment to an existing co-stewarding arrangement and to bringing important cultural conversations to the fore. In addition to these considerations, several more common issues like the availability of clear object information, communication with fabricators, and an atypical installation environment ended up complicating the execution.
Dave began his career in 2007 as a curatorial Project Assistant in the Asian Export Art department at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. After moving into the centralized Collection Management department, he gravitated towards the processes and physical logistics of the changing exhibitions program. While at PEM, Dave worked on projects with Art Basel Miami Beach, the NYC Winter Antiques Show, the Palace Museum in Beijing and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He served as the Preparator during PEM’s expansion and reinstallation, which opened in 2019. Dave joined the Prep team at Crystal Bridges as the Senior Preparator for Exhibitions in 2020.
Pat Pickett, Melissa Mariano (The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA)
Session: MOTHS! An Emergency Response to The Huntington Art Museum’s Infestation of Tineola bisselliela– Webbing Clothes Moths
This presentation describes the discovery of webbing clothes moths in the European galleries of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, and the combined efforts of Registration, Preparation, Facilities, Conservation, and Security, over the course of the following year, to combat the infestation. We will illustrate the steps taken to reduce the moth population and to disrupt their life cycle. This includes sequestration and removal of the infestation source; cleaning and freezing of all carpets, tapestries and drapes; deep cleaning the of the entire building and all of the art and decorative objects; elimination of hiding and breeding spaces; implementation of a robust Integrated Pest Management plan; implementation of new dusting protocols for both objects and cleaning protocols for the building; and addressing building maintenance. We emphasize the need for a museum wide awareness, and the combined efforts of all to work in tandem in order to avoid such an incident from occurring again.
Pat Pickett received a BA from Scripps College and an MFA from Hunter College. She has worked as a preparator since 1991. First at the Parrish Art Museum where she was also the museum’s building manager. Then as an on-call preparator for The Parrish, Guild Hall and several art galleries on the East End of Long Island and Manhattan, while managing Dia’s Dan Flavin Art Institute. Moving to Los Angeles in 2002, she began work at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, Botanical Garden where she recently celebrated her 20th year as a preparator for the Art Museum.
Melissa Mariano is a museum consultant specialized in preventive conservation. She started with Nakano Logistics in 2012, providing registration, collections care, conservation, and project management services to private and institutional clients. Previously, she worked with museums, private collections, and archeological collections and sites in the United States, Italy and Turkey. She received her BA in Art History from Brandeis University (2004), and MA in Preventive Conservation from Northumbria University (2008). Melissa resides in Los Angeles, with her husband and feline companions.
Michelle Barger (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA),
Kiernan Graves (Site & Studio Conservation, Ventura, CA),
Bryan Cain (Atthowe Fine Art Services, Oakland, CA)
Session: 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.
Michelle Barger is the Head of Conservation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art where she oversees conservators with expertise in paintings, paper, objects, photography, and electronic media. Unorthodox approaches to art making and how this shapes conservation practice are subjects of specialized focus, and have led to publications on Eva Hesse and Bruce Conner. Barger has worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She holds a BA in Art History from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, and an MS in Art Conservation from the University of Delaware/Winterthur Museum.
Kiernan Graves is an art conservator in private practice who graduated from the Courtauld Institute of Art with a Masters in the Conservation of Wall Painting. Her specializations are modern frescos and exterior community based murals. She spent the first part of her career working on UNESCO World Heritage sites in Asia and Europe. In the US, her professional collaborations have included SFMOMA, JUDD Foundation, the Getty Conservation Institute and LACMA. Currently, she is dividing her time between the rooftops of SF and streets of LA working on three public artworks and is the owner of Site & Studio Conservation.
Bryan Cain is a graduate of Ohio State University with a degree in sculpture. He entered the field of art handling and transportation at Fine Art Transportation Services (F.A.T.S.), a not-for- profit service in Columbus, Ohio. After moving to San Francisco, he joined Atthowe Fine Art Services. During his tenure at Atthowe he helped developed the company’s ability to handle large, complicated installations and moves. Atthowe’s leadership was recently demonstrated in the move of Diego Rivera’s monumental mural “Pan American Unity.” Bryan participated in the conversion of Atthowe Fine Art Services to an employee-owned cooperative and is now its first CEO.
Elizabeth K Mauro (Art Installation, LLC, Port Orchard, WA)
Quick Tip: Prep Pep Up
With the global pandemic shutting down museums all over the world, adaptation has become the new normal for preparators. Humor and camaraderie have proven to be two of the best tools in the box to cope with the ever-changing landscape of exhibit work during Covid 19. Have you ever found yourself busting up at the dinner table as you relay the crazy thing that happened at work, just to realize that your family doesn’t find your exploits nearly as funny as you do? Join us as we laugh at the wacky situations that we find ourselves in every day, and the little things we do to get through the week.
Since 1991, Elizabeth K Mauro has completed over 1,000 installations for institutions, galleries, and private collectors through her business Art Installation, LLC. She has received professional training in principles of exhibition design, art handling and installation from nine different museums, and has been a long time preparator for several museums within the Puget Sound including the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Bellevue Arts Museum, and the Museum of Glass. After 30 years of installing art, she is finally taking a break, and is currently transitioning into providing instruction for a new generation of preparators.
Vanessa Garcia, Nya Abudu (The Broad, Los Angeles, CA)
Quick Tip: Modeling 3D Galleries At The Broad Museum
While working from home last year, the prep team at The Broad Museum began learning SketchUp, a 3D modeling computer program, with the goal of rendering the galleries to record installation elevations. This video will illustrate the process of creating 3D gallery models as well as how other teams in the museum are utilizing this format.
Vanessa Garcia (she/her/hers) was born and raised in occupied Tongva land, Los Angeles. She is a graduate of the Diversity Apprenticeship Program and a preparator at The Broad Museum.
Nya Abudu (she/her/they) works as a full-time Preparator at The Broad museum. They were born and raised in occupied Tongva land, Los Angeles. Nya was chosen to be 1 of 8, out of nearly 800 applicants, to be an Apprentice with the 1st cohort of the Diversity Apprenticeship Program at The Broad museum in 2018. They have also worked on installations with private clients and exhibits at Museum of Latin American Art, California African American Museum, Chinese American Museum, as well as fabrication for works on display at the Los Angeles Public Library, Disney, and Discovery Cube Los Angeles.
Christopher Moreland (St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO)
Session: Sunken Cities
The Saint Louis Art Museum embarked on a significant exhibition of over 200 archeological findings off the coast of the Mediterranean– artifacts ranging from simple gold coins to colossal sculptures with weights of over 12,000 pounds. This was not something that the museum had ever taken on in its history– and we were the first venue in the United States to ever have these objects. I will discuss some of the planning processes, challenges, equipment and modifications that were utilized to achieve this monumental exhibit installation, sharing adaptations for expansive rigging and load challenges to gallery and installation modifications that helped allow for the successful exhibition.
Christopher Moreland is the Head of Art Preparation and Installation at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Chris has worked as a preparator at the museum since 2009, became Head Preparator in 2016 and in 2018, developed Art Preparation & Installation (API) as an autonomous department within the museum. He facilitates all artwork movement, installations and exhibitions, and management of collections storage for the campus. His role also includes project management, scheduling, implementation, and oversight in the museum’s permanent collection galleries for conservation rotations and multiple gallery special Installations. Recently Chris led stakeholders through demo and renovation of five galleries – to complete the re-installation of the museum’s new Oceanic and Australian art galleries which opened mid- 2021, along with other special Installation projects through 2022: Oliver Lee Jackson, Masterpieces of 18th Century English Silver, Pablo Picasso, Shifting Perspectives: New Views on American Landscape, and Memory Painting: Helen LaFrance and the American Landscape.
Caitlin Grames (Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI)
Session: New Media, New You: Time-Based Media & Pandemic Practices
Those who handle time-based media collections are familiar with the challenge of preparing for and facing the unknown; working with an art form which is inherently mercurial and entropic necessitates a high degree of resourcefulness. And with the perpetual technological advances available to artists, learning to evolve our practices and methods becomes an ever more crucial skill for the care of these increasingly non-traditional collections. On a larger scale, considering further challenges posed by external forces such as a pandemic, even the physical ways in which preparators and collections specialists work and collaborate must likewise readily evolve. Using the TBM collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts as a case study, this session will explore developing better workflows for managing time-based media artwork, methods for creating custom artist questionnaires and cataloging forms, developing an object numbering system tailored to non-traditional objects, and additional strategies for adjusting to work constraints caused by the pandemic.
Caitlin Grames is a Museum Technician at Detroit Institute of Arts, where she has worked since 2014. With ten years of art handling experience, her core responsibility is the coordination and design of permanent gallery installations, as well as working on exhibitions and collections storage projects. Additionally, she is also a founding member of the DIA’s Time-Based Media Team, an interdepartmental work group whose responsibility is the management and conservation of time-based media artworks. Caitlin earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Western Michigan University, where she was also a teaching assistant for the Department of Art History.
Sponsorship
We would like to thank all the great organizations who have become official sponsors of this conference so far. Any organization interested in supporting this valuable conference should contact Mark Wamaling at mark@paccin.org for details.
Official Sponsors
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