Lecture from Visiting Scholar Seb Chan: Museums, Technologies and Civic Transformations
Please join the U-M Museum Studies Program for this lecture on Museums, Technologies, and Civic Transformations by Seb Chan, Director & CEO of ACMI (formerly Australian Centre for the Moving Image) in Melbourne, Australia. The first quarter of the 21st century has seen museums significantly transformed by media technology and networked society, yet often this has been viewed as institutions reacting to, rather than leading change. Institutions are now deeply enmeshed in complex technological systems, platforms, and services across all parts of a museum’s operations and practices. Today, the nature of collections themselves is implicated as they are increasingly ‘born digital.’ These shifts all require highly skilled labor, new strategies, policies, and debate to ensure that the transformations serve the museum’s community and long-term interests.
This talk will explore trust, attention, digital memory, ephemerality, and the fragility of new cultural artefacts, and conversely, maintenance, longevity, and the need for bold pan-institutional and sector-wide initiatives, new skills, and literacies.
More About Seb Chan
Seb Chan is the Director & CEO of ACMI, guiding ACMI as a museum focused on screen culture and the intersection of media, technology, worldbuilding and storytelling. Prior to his appointment to this role, Seb was ACMI’s and the museum field’s first Chief Experience Officer (2015-22), and was a key part of the team behind ACMI’s expansion into a multi-award winning, multiplatform museum. Career highlights also include leading the digital transformation of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York from its award-winning interactive Pen with Local Projects, to the acquisition of important software-based works for the Smithsonian’s collection (2011–15). Beginning his museum career in Sydney he led the Powerhouse Museum’s pioneering work in open access, mass collaboration and digital experience during the 2000s in Sydney.
SUPPORT
This program is presented by the U-M Museum Studies Program and co-sponsored by the University of Michigan Arts Initiative, the Bentley Library, the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the Digital Studies Institute, History of Art, LSA DEI, UMMA, Office of Research, the Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop, and the School of Information