Museum of Old and New Art

The Tasmanian MONA (short for the Museum of Old and New Art) is an early adopter of Articheck, having started their usage in early 2015. MONA’s collections team identified their installation periods as time-sensitive and costly, so decided to stop condition-checking with pen and paper, rather taking up Articheck’s digital condition reporting tool.

 

In this explorative case study with Lotte Kronborg – Exhibition & Collections Technician at MONA – we are looking at the integration of Articheck into MONA’s workflow.

 

Located in Hobart, Australia, the privately-owned MONA comprises an in-house collection of over 400 works of art. Some pieces in the collection are structural, in that the galleries have been designed to accommodate them. Other parts of the permanent collection are frequently moved, often requiring so-called ‘re-hangs’ in the challenging exhibition architecture, which in places is quite literally carved in stone.

 

Temporary exhibitions are held one or two times per year, with off-site projects and touring exhibitions that run regularly throughout the year. MONA’s requirements for their permanent and temporary displays are demanding due to the diversity of the museum’s collection. Take the exhibition ‘On The Origins of Art’ for example, which encompassed over 200 objects ranging from newly-commissioned pieces to ancient works estimated as between 300,000 to 800,000 years old.

 

Lotte tells us that the condition reporting during the install for this exhibition was undertaken by a four-headed team of conservators and registrars; “…each of which was using Articheck with a slightly differing approach. On the one hand, Articheck proved helpful in pre-populating reports via its desktop-based importing tool when gathering object details from ‘Vernon’. On the other hand, some of the reports were done directly and in situ.”

 

“The key benefit for us is the time saved by using Articheck as opposed to previous processes, which involved tasks such as image capturing, down-loading, printing and scanning to compile and generate a complete and comprehensive, yet detailed report. The Articheck app allows generating reports with images, in situ, up-loading them directly into a PDF format once complete, with easy options of emailing and uploading onto our storage platforms, as well as printing completed reports for archiving, referencing and transit purposes. The process is definitely simplified, and I would think that the amount of time saved would be around the one-quarter to one-third of the time it used to take, per report, all going well.””

—Lotte Kronborg, Exhibition & Collections Technician at MONA

 

“We use Articheck mainly for preparing reports for new acquisitions, collection works going on display, and loaned artworks which require detailed condition reports. We equally use the ‘update report’ option, mainly at the end of an exhibition, but also at intervals throughout display, when there may be reason for requiring more detailed monitoring and checking of condition. We utilise the treatment sections when required, on a needs basis. Also the custom section has been very useful for additional detail that would otherwise not fit into the general condition section. It allows for the incorporation of object-specific registration and installation documentation, as well as the inclusion of additional NWA parts, if required.”
—Lotte Kronborg, Exhibition & Collections Technician at MONA