From writing large-scale, big-budget marketing plans to proofing marketing pieces for the printer, I generally have about 15-30 different projects cross my desk every day. Some things take a considerable amount of attention, while others take seconds. Some days I have six meetings, while others I have just one. As with many jobs, my position requires me to switch back and forth between projects all day, every day. At times, I find the harried nature and varied scope of my work to be exhausting. But most of the time, I find it exhilarating. Regardless, I love every minute.

To give you an overview of what someone who works in museum marketing does , I thought that I’d outline my typical day. In order to do that, I recorded my activities throughout the past Monday. While some of you were relaxing (or partying) on your Columbus Day off, I was hard at work with my fellow colleagues at the IMA.

Image taken from ugotbling.com

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Filed under: Marketing, Musings

At a recent dinner party, a friend expressed his fascination with provenance (Defined: the history of ownership of a valued object or work of art). He was astonished that if he bought something as a bona fide purchaser, or in good faith, that he may someday be required to return it without compensation if it was found to be a valuable cultural relic that was stolen, looted or untrue in record of ownership. I, on the other hand, was astonished that this concept seemed so unfamiliar to him.

And perhaps this is why we began a series of articles in the IMA’s magazine on the provenance of important works in the Museum’s collection, written by Annette Schlagenhauff. As the IMA’s Associate Curator for Research, Annette has spent years tracing the paths of works of art from the artists’ hands to the walls of the IMA. The stories are fascinating and not without moral ambiguities and missing pieces. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Public Programs, The Toby

The following post was written by Charles Falco (pictured below), Professor of Optical Sciences; Physics and UA Chair of Condensed Matter Physics.

Professor Charles Falco

OK, yesterday Richard gave you his version of events.  Today, it’s my turn.

Part I: Making the Connections

My Background

The year: 1960
The place: Ft. Dodge, Iowa
Richard started his story ten years ago in Madrid.  I’ll start mine fifty years ago in Ft. Dodge.

I’ve been keenly interested in images since early childhood, starting with an old Kodak box camera, and advancing to my first “serious” camera when I was twelve. This involvement with creating and manipulating images using various processes — photography, cyanotypes, silk screening, etc. — steadily expanded as I got older, to the point that by age 30 I owned at least 20 lenses ranging up to a 800 mm super-telephoto, as well as had designed and fabricated various pieces of specialized photographic equipment for my imaging experiments.

The infrared camera described in this blog is the most recent piece of fabricated/altered imaging equipment dating back to an enlarger I made in high school by modifying an old bellows camera. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Conservation

What’s over? One of our biggest projects….that’s all. Over a year of work, international travel, HD footage, 11 episodes and lots, lots, more. What will we do next?

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Filed under: New Media