DIA Director of Collections Management

Role/Responsibilities

Tracking the DIA collection. Installation of objects into gallery space. Construction management for exhibitions. Hanging. Exhibition planning. Re-housing objects in storage. Collections care – are objects stored / installed in a way that protects their wellbeing?
Co-workers: 6 permanent employees. 3 contract & 2 lighting. = 11.
Also works closely with registrar, interpretation, & curators.
Registrar handles canned exhibitions. Terry works with DIA's objects.

A typical workflow
Shows me a printout of a PDF he has. The printout is a grid that lists pictures of objects as well as some metadata ( accession no, title, medium), and lists each object's requirements for presentation. Some of the info in this report (e.g. thumnail pictures of objects) is drawn from TMS.

With this printout, he manually checks each object's position in the floorplan of the gallery (e.g. architectural drawing). He compares data from the architectural drawings and the printout of objects to see if requirements are being met.
In other words, his work is heavily paper-based.

Accession number system at the DIA.

Accession number – the "hook" on which information about an object hangs.
The system isn't serial. It indicates a lot of information about an object, e.g. year, sequence it was accessioned in, part number, permanent? onloan? provenance.

What contractors do you work with:

Exhibition designer, architects, construction workers. He manages the construction of the exhibition, and much of the construction is done by contractors - builders, electricians. Chooses between competing bids; monitors contracts; checks to see if construction is occuring in such a way that built materials (e.g. cases) are made with the safety of the object in mind (e.g. lighting, climate)

What is your role in ensuring accessibility in the gallery space?

There are architectural and interpretation concerns. In terms of the gallery space - can people view objects and their labels? How do you position objects in space? (Note: for the upcoming Islamic art installation, cases are being designed to be user friendly for wheelchair users). 3D models of objects / images are an alternative way to make accessible artifacts - visitors can feel, hold them. But how do you prevent people from stealing them? There is better accessibility in the newly renovated parts of the building but the DIA still has infrastructure problems. E.g. - not a lot of ways to bring electricity into the gallery space (e.g. you're wall-bound). Old building isn't wired for wifi. We need easy to install wifi solutions; wireless multipliers could be an option.

What IT do you use?

Adobe illustrator, reader, photoshop, filemaker, TMS, auto cad.