MCN 2024

The New Mexico State Land Office leases and manages New Mexico state trust lands. Much of that land has been leased for extractive practices such as oil and gas drilling. During her tenure, Commissioner Stephanie Garcia-Richards works closely with Indigenous communities to return stolen land to displaced tribes. In 2022, just over 2,000 acres were returned to the Fort Sill Apache Tribe. The tribe had been separated from their ancestral land since the US Government captured their forebears and put them in military-run internment camps in Oklahoma. The exchange was completed last fall and the land is now under the management of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe.

Every fall semester, NMHU’s Media Arts Seminar class collaborates with a cultural or community-based organization to develop an exhibit. In the fall of 2023, Professor Lauren Addario’s students Destiny Zukevich, Emily Clark, and Marlene Bad Warrior, worked with Ethan Ortega, Assistant Commissioner of Cultural Resources, and archeologists Carlyn Stewart, Anne Curry, and Adesbah Foguth at the New Mexico State Land Office (NMSLO). The resulting exhibit highlights the recent accomplishments of the New Mexico State Land Office’s Land Back initiatives.

The exhibition includes a video with perspectives from Indigenous youth talking about what land back means to them, a screen-based mapping component that draws attention to how tribal lands in the southwest are impacted by climate change, two graphic panels, and bookmarks that feature endangered animals and insects in southern New Mexico.

New Mexico Highlands University’s Media Arts & Technology Department has partnered with the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs since 2005. The program cultivates a homegrown pool of multimedia specialists working with cultural content and committed to serving their communities.

Los Luceros Historic Site sits on 300-acres of New Mexico land with apple orchards, the Rio Grande, historic buildings, and a rich queer history including Maria Chabot and Georgia O’Keeffe. This historic site opened in 2019, right before every museum and historic site in New Mexico closed due to the pandemic. In January of 2023 the Program for Interactivity and Cultural Technology (PICT) in Media Arts & Technology developed multiple installations for Los Luceros as they planned a grand re-opening.

A 3D-Interactive 60”x44” CNC engraved table was created from trees that burned during the devastating northern New Mexico fires of 2022. The table has 11 buttons that each feature something significant about the location on site they are representing. Different historic structures, animals, and iconography were also created using Blender 3D- an open-source application. Buttons and buildings were 3D-printed in Becca Sharp’s home studio. Using open source hardware (the Arduino and the Museduino- developed in-house by Rianne Trujillo and Miriam Langer) to connect the buttons and LEDs, which in turn illuminate historic buildings, the acequia madre (the mother irrigation canal), and key features of this incredible site on the banks of the Rio Grande.

What makes this table so special is the use of technology to enhance the historic site without requiring the visitor to use screen-based technology. Visitors can feel the corn-based plastic that houses the buttons and the wood that was given a second life through this project. The table also guides visitors as a way-finding tool and creates an exciting map for both adults and children to learn about all that the site has to offer.

Museum collections are many things, but primarily they function as repositories of information, where data-intensive work has been conducted for decades. Like other knowledge infrastructures, the information in these collections is built on installed bases and requires highly skilled technicians to maintain these long-lasting digital systems. However, in representations of this computing work, women's voices and perspectives are under-appreciated, even though they have significant labor contributions in this area. This presentation will share early results from my dissertation, where I ask 1) What are the experiences of women doing computing work in museum collections? and 2) To what extent have they enacted non-normative/ transformative data practices in their work?

I answer these questions through semi-structured interviews with women practitioners engaged in museum computing. This presentation will share early results of transformative data work currently happening in collections led by women practitioners. The transformative paradigm is a framework that “addresses power issues, social justice, and cultural complexity throughout the research process” (Mertens 2007). I will share the results of the ways that practitioners are transforming collection data in ways that similarly center social justice and challenge oppressive powers. Part of understanding women’s contributions to museum computing is to further unpack their resistance to the harmful legacies of museum collections and their data. It is apparent that many practitioners working in museums have goals for their data to be inclusive, and to repair past harms of institutions, yet these practices vary based on institutional history, number of staff, and available funding. This presentation will share empirical evidence of work currently happening, adding to a more robust definition of what ‘museum computing’ can and should entail.

This research aligns with many conversations in critical data studies, urging for a more intersectional approach to data creation, maintenance, use, and reuse that is less oppressive to all (Benjamin 2019; Cifor et al 2019; D’Ignazio and Klein 2020). A further goal of this presentation is to deepen conversations between museum practitioners and work in big data studies, and more importantly, begin a conversation about what other data-intensive environments can learn from museum computing.

For the first time The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens is able to present its rich and varied collections in a single unified interface. We will discuss how over a 5 month period we were able to iterate our way to a high-fidelity collections prototype laying the groundwork for a production-ready online collection. This singular view on our holdings affords our audience a window into the various disciplines within our organisation and helps forward our transition to a more coherent, less siloed public presentation.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is increasing the size of its current facilities by 50 percent. Adding nearly 100,000 square feet to the 200,000-square-foot facility, the expansion will allow the museum to showcase its growing collection and welcome more visitors to experience the power of art, in an inclusive environment. Envisioned to support Crystal Bridges’ commitment to free access to art for all, the new space will increase capacity for presenting art and exhibitions, educational and outreach initiatives, cultural programming, and community events. Increased gallery space (by 65 percent) will allow the museum to present art with two new galleries while also adding to existing space for temporary exhibitions and offering new spaces for community displays and in-gallery engagements.

This past year, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened three experimental gallery spaces. One experimental space focuses on the art of American craft; woodworking, ceramics, textiles. This space not only explores how we play with our collection, but how we plan and execute both physical and digital engagements. This space plays a significant role in the institution’s digital expansion through a digital interactive pilot focused on contemporary artist processes of woodworking.

This presentation will illustrate the processes of creating this interactive pilot including leading an multi-departmental task force, participating in a global web3 technology cohort and tech accelerator program (Web3 for Arts and Culture), and producing an experience that transcends the in-person experience through an online gaming platform (Spatial.io).

Through a tech accelerator program called Web3 for Arts and Culture (https://wac-lab.xyz), the museum partnered with a digital agency, Broken Egg (brokenegg.io). Together, they developed an immersive experience that guides visitors through the woodworking processes of various artists represented in the museum’s permanent collection.