Collecting Contemporary Photography Symposium

Friday 11 Oct 2019, 10.00am–4.00pm

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

$50 waged, $40 unwaged

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Join colleagues from across the museums, galleries, and archives sector at this one-day symposium to discuss sustainable approaches to collecting and caring for large volumes of work by art photographers.

As contemporary photographers consider the future of their archives, the institutions that collect their work face pressing questions:

• Should institutions collect negatives, transparencies, and digital files when a photographer’s artistic output consists of prints derived from these?

• If so, what status and use should apply to them? Should the institution be able to make prints from such source media?

• What about images that were never considered worth exhibiting or publishing by the photographer? Can or should these be regarded differently from finished works once in an institution’s collection?

• How can museums, galleries and libraries manage the potential volume of photographers’ archives? What trade-offs need to be made?

• What documentation and preservation efforts are some photographers undertaking themselves?

Speakers:

David Alsop, Director of Suite Tirohanga, and agent for Ans Westra

Ron Brownson, Senior Curator, New Zealand and Pacific Art, Auckland Art Gallery | Toi o Tāmaki

Fiona Clark, independent photographer, Waitara

Shaun Higgins, Auckland War Memorial Museum | Tāmaki Paenga Hira

Athol McCredie, Curator Photographs, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Anna Petersen, Curator Photographs, Hocken Collections | Uare Taoka o Hākena

John Sullivan, Kaiārahi Ratonga Tiaki | Curatorial Services Leader, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand | Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa

Registration includes morning and afternoon tea, and lunch.

This is also an opportunity to view The New Photography – Life in the 60s and 70s, curated by Athol McCredie, before it closes 13 October.