Working in a museum library combines aspects of academic, special and public librarianship. Speakers in this session will present on the unique issues facing museum libraries and librarians.
Forging a Library-Museum Partnership: Creativity, Exploration, and Resistance
Speaker: Jacob Lackner
After the Oxford College Library and the Michael C. Carlos Museum were brought together as part of organizational realignment at Emory University, library and museum staff began to build a formalized partnership for the first time. The goal of this endeavor was to bring museum collections, resources, and personnel to a new audience at a new campus. Collaboration started with small meetings and building internal teams with relevant stakeholders. This created a foundation for lending artwork, planning and constructing a dedicated exhibition space, and guest speaking during library instruction. The process has required a commitment to cooperation, resource sharing, flexibility, and patience, but has already achieved exciting results. Museum resources enabled the library to bring more diverse voices onto the Oxford College campus, including works by contemporary African and contemporary Indigenous artists, as well as displaying an exhibit of works on paper that was co-curated with an Oxford College faculty member.
As an act of resistance, this collaboration stands against the dominant view that undergraduate education should prioritize job training and narrow pathways over humanistic inquiry and digressions into the arts. Instead, this project encourages students to resist the pressure of productivity, look at something unexpected in the library, and ask questions about the relationship between art, information, and society. Additionally, the project resists the idea that museum collections must always remain in the museum, giving them new context and new viewers in a new place. Established pieces from the collection can be reinterpreted by taking up residence amidst busy students, student artwork, and book stacks.
Attendees will learn strategies and takeaways for planning library-museum collaboration and be encouraged to see how similar partnerships can advance long-term goals at their institutions. Libraries and museums can learn much from each other, and joining forces can leave both institutions better prepared for the challenges of the future.
Catalogues of the World: Building a Universal Archive
Speaker: Holly Phillips
Launched in 2001, the Contemporary Catalogs Project (CCP) is an initiative of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library to actively collect and preserve contemporary art gallery exhibition catalogs from around the world. Led by library staff with support from interns and volunteers, the project entails identifying galleries, requesting catalogs, recording solicitations, and acknowledging donors. The project goals are: to preserve publications for future researchers; acquire materials while they are still readily available; represent living artists as inclusively and globally as possible; and expand collecting beyond dominant networks of publishers and distributors.
Through sustained outreach and the generosity of galleries worldwide, the library has acquired more than 25,000 publications, representing 60 countries and over 10 languages. In 2020, the project was expanded to include PDF catalogs, which Watson is requesting, archiving, and making publicly available for online viewing and download. More than 5,700 gallery catalog PDFs are now available directly through WorldCat, Watsonline (our online catalog), and downloadable as an entire collection in MARC format record sets.
This presentation will include an overview of the workflow and tracking documentation developed for the project, highlights and key takeaways, and introduce a newly launched landing page and online index.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Korea
Speaker: J. Vera Lee
This original archival research focuses on the role of the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA; formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts (HAA)) in a seminal stateside exhibition of Korean National Treasures. Robert Griffing, then-Director of HAA, became interested in sponsoring an exhibition of Korean National Treasures as a member of the UNESCO-International Commission of Museums (ICOM; 1947). When the Korean War erupted in 1951, and national treasures in peril were packed and moved from the National Museum of Korea (NMK) in Seoul to Pusan, Griffing offered HAA as a haven for Korean National Treasures to Kim Chewon, NMK Director. Griffing and Kim’s correspondence reveals a framework of influence and power linked to narrating national identity through the objects of the eventual 1957 exhibition (that originated with the National Gallery of Art). I evaluate the making of this exhibition as a precursor to current events around national representation in art museums and libraries. On a more modest scale, I have reformatted my position and labor as a museum librarian to include research and writing. Altogether, I read power and roles that undergird either exhibitions or workflows through a Critical Librarianship lens, to highlight opportunities for resistance, whether geo-political, organizational, or narrative.
