Registration Fee (including lunch): $45 NEMA members / $55 non-members
Registration Fee (bring your own lunch): $35 NEMA members / $45 non-members
All staff from member museums are eligible for the member rate.
Not sure if your museum is a member? Just call NEMA, 781-641-0013, to find out.

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What are the essential skills every curator must know for curating in the 21st century? How is the role of curator evolving to meet changing museum and audience needs? Join our experts as we continue to review the scope of knowledge, skills and experience a curator needs to serve as an integral museum staff member. The workshop will focus on three core responsibilities:
Collections Planning:  How to focus collecting efforts and strategically collect for the future
Exhibitions/Program Planning: Working with living artists, engaging new audiences through performance art and public art, and collaboration with community members
Publications: Sharing your collections and exhibits through printed publications

10:00 am  Welcome & Introductions

10:15 am  Animating the Museum with Contemporary Art
Nicholas Capasso, Curator, DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park, MA; Katherine French, Director, Danforth Museum of Art, MA; and Carole Anne Meehan, Curator, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, MA
Hear about innovative programming ideas for animating the museum with contemporary art. Three Boston area curators will explore the many issues facing museum professionals who work with living artists. Nick Capasso will discuss his work with the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park’s Annual, particularly in regard to site specific installations and performance art.  Katherine will explain the Museum’s new program for emerging curators working with artists in the Danforth Museum of Art’s New England Currents series. Carole Anne will share her experiences as the first director of ICA/Vita Brevis, a program that commissioned artists to create new, temporary works of public art in response to Boston’s landscape and history and her current work with the Art Wall and Momentum Series, as well as the James and Audrey Foster Prize. There will be ample time for questions.  Following the panel discussion, Katherine and Carole Anne introduce the Danforth Museum of Art’s 2008 Annual Members’ Juried Art Exhibition, which Carole Anne juried.   

11:30 am  Lunch
Tour the 2008 Annual Members’ Juried Exhibition, which Ms. Meehan juried.

12:30 pm  Publishing a Collections and Exhibitions Catalog
Ellen Dyer, Director of Education & The Center for the Study of Early American History, Montpelier: The General Henry Knox Museum, ME, and Virginia Anderson, Assistant Curator of American Art, HarvardArt Museum, MA
A collections or exhibition catalog can be an intimidating project. What research is required? How do you manage the process? What are the current formats? How do you collaborate with other staff? What funding sources are available?  How do you work with publishers? Why even produce a catalog? We will examine the pitfalls and benefits of such a project for both history and art museums.

2:00 pm  Collections Planning
Raney Bench, Educator, The Abbe Museum, ME
You have a collections policy, now what? What objects does your museum need? What do you want? What’s the difference? Learn how to write a clear Collections Plan to focus your collecting efforts. Discover the key questions and challenges to address when developing and writing a strategic plan for collecting for the future.

3:15 pm  The Changing Role of the Museum Curator
Ron M. Potvin, Assistant Director & Curator, John Nicholas Brown Center, RI
Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on the themes of the day and how the role of the curator is changing to meet the needs of the 21st century.