Behind the Scenes: Managing the Flow of Art

 

 Most visitors to the Princeton University Art Museum are unaware of the complexity involved in the seemingly simple act of placing an art object in a Museum gallery. The registrar and collections services staff is composed of highly trained professionals who serve as the caretakers and record keepers of the collections. They are responsible for documenting the collection in digital and analog files as well as for the storage, transit, and insurance coverage of art objects, and their duties are supported by a trail of paperwork and procedures. On any given day a registrar may be involved with shipping outgoing loans, tracking internal movement of objects for precept classes held in the Museum, installing incoming loans to an exhibition in the Museum’s galleries, reviewing the mounts and housing of objects in storage areas, and marking new acquisitions with their accession numbers. Policies and procedures inform every aspect of registration and lay a foundation on which the department can safely record, house, and transport the objects entrusted to a museum’s care. To devote one’s life to the preservation of objects, one must be utterly enamored of art.

 

At the Art Museum, four registrars and the inventory project team oversee the Museum’s vast collections, and within the past year a number of staff changes have occurred in the department. Longtime chief registrar Maureen McCormick recently retired after twenty-eight years of dedicated service, and Alexia Hughes was promoted to chief registrar and manager of collections services to lead the department. A member of the Museum’s registrarial staff since 2003, Alexia is responsible for departmental oversight and administration as well as several special projects, including planning for a new off-site storage facility and arranging for the safe movement and relocation of the contents of art storage rooms during the Museum building’s system upgrades. In the coming months, she looks forward to meeting with her counterparts at other institutions as well as with experts in conservation and collections care, to ensure that the new construction and the upcoming transfer of collections objects to the new storage facility are completed according to highest industry standards.
 

Associate registrar for collections Emily Phillinger McVeigh joined the Museum at the end of July 2012. Emily oversees the Museum’s encyclopedic collections, handling all acquisitions-related documentation; tracking the location of collection objects to sustain inventory management; and working with preparators to ensure the safe and appropriate movement of the wide range of objects in the Museum’s collections (from ancient Egyptian reliefs to contemporary digital art). Emily came to Princeton from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she had extensive experience in collection moves and inventory management.

 

James Kopp, associate registrar for exhibitions and outgoing loans, joined the Museum staff in May 2012 and manages the loan program of collections objects that are lent to exhibitions in the United States, as well as the long-term loans that come to the Museum for study or display. He is responsible for coordinating packing, transit, courier arrangements (when a Museum staff person travels with the loan for safekeeping), and for a complete review of the condition of each object going on loan. James also handles three to four Museum exhibitions per year and was responsible for physically bringing Dancing into Dreams and Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe to Princeton.

 

A personnel search for a registrar responsible for international loans, exhibitions, and long-term loans from the collection is currently in process. In the first few months of his or her tenure, the new registrar will consolidate the loans to the exhibition New Jersey as Non-Site and begin logistical planning for Bontecou: Drawn Worlds (2014) and The City Dynamic (2015).