Another SEMC Report

Remember our recent post about the Southeastern Museums Conference annual meeting, in which Christy Sinksen told us some of what she learned while there? Well, our director, Bill Eiland, responded about his own experiences:

As a consequence of the inability of some museums to afford transportation, housing and registration for their staff to the Southeastern Museums Conference meeting in Charleston, W.Va., I had several requests to fill in as organizer, chair or "interlocutor" for various sessions. One of them was the research session, an annual event that I started at SEMC some 20 years ago; I believed then and I believe now that the state, regional and national conferences of museum professional should have a session devoted to scholarship in our museums, since we are primarily educators for our various publics, and I was particularly pleased to learn that the GMOA had won awards for content in its publications this year--the first year that such honors have been bestowed for content as well as design!

In the research session this year, we heard three papers, all of direct relevance to the Georgia Museum of Art. The first was a report on research on the drawings executed at Sloss Furnace, an industrial site in Birmingham. Our interest? The presenter, Karen Utz, the curator there, asked for our help in identifying images of steel production in the South, and we have important works of art by such artists as Howard Cook, Richard Coe and Lamar Dodd, among others, to contribute to such an exhibition. Second, we heard a talk on the production of toys by a company in Tupeolo, Mississippi, and you are right to ask of what import such a subject could be to the Georgia Museum of Art: our Fifth Henry D. Green Symposium on the Decorative Arts, scheduled for January 2009, will include a talk on toys and their relevance to the South's material culture. Finally, Dennis Harper, former curator here at GMOA, spoke on the exhibition slated to travel to his museum at Auburn as well as to ours here in Athens and the one at the University of Oklahoma. Dennis's talk, and our chance to hear it, is important for several reasons: for planning our installation; for writing and preparing the catalogue, for which we are responsible; and for raising funds collaboratively to support the project.

The research session was but one reason my attendance at this peer professional meeting was so important. The associate director and registrars who were there with me were equally gratified to receive prestigious awards for the GMOA, to attend their special-interest group meetings (I had the privilege of leading the directors in a luncheon and afternoon session), to make ourselves aware of the services and products available at the museum exposition and to do the all-important networking that allows us to obtain those products, services and programs cheaply and easily.

Especially now that the museum is closed, we need to be preparing quickly and efficiently for our re-opening in 2011. Such meetings as SEMC help us to do so, and, because we have no state funds for travel or staff education and training, I am more grateful than ever to the W. Newton Morris Foundation and its Trustees, who specifically devote some of the funds we receive from them to travel and professional development.