Mediating curatorial and conservation priorities in physical library displays
As the person who serves as the liaison between exhibit “curators” (exhibit content selectors—variously students, donors, faculty, and fellow library staff) and the conservation team, I often find myself navigating the terrain between a curator’s vision for a show and the realities of protecting materials from damage. My job is to midwife the ideas presented by content creators and bring them into the world of the gallery in as creative and revealing a way possible. Often it involves negotiating between competing priorities and points of view: curatorial ambitions and desires on the one hand and protecting library resources on the other. A couple of somewhat fictionalized conversations from planning the current Terraforming exhibit in Green Library, which draws on the Helen and Newton Harrison Papers, illustrate the process.
