Keynote Presenters

Opening Plenary Keynote

"What We Talk About When We Tag About Art"
Susan Chun, Cultural Heritage Consulting

Our constituents—students, visitors, and colleagues—are talking to us. After years of experiencing a (primarily) one-way conversation about art, in which educators, authors, and other “experts” selected, described, and contextualized art and art history, users have embraced the new tools of Web 2.0. These tools, including social tagging, personalization, and user contributed content, have given voice to the vision of users of art images online. Susan Chun, a founder of steve.museum —a museum-based project that is developing tools for collecting tags (or user-contributed descriptions of art)—will present some early and sometimes surprising results of the steve project’s research into what users see and say when tagging art. She will look at user-contributed content gathered by other Web 2.0 projects such as Wikipedia, and will consider some of the implications for Pachyderm users and others of the ways in which our dialogue with users will be reshaped by the emerging new media environment.

Susan Chun consults with cultural heritage organizations on information management and intellectual property strategy and policy. Her clients include museums, libraries, universities, and funders. She is a founder of the steve project, which is investigating the value of social tagging to improve access to museum collections. Until 2007, Susan was general manager for collections information planning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where she was responsible for institutional strategy and for developing and managing projects involving intellectual property, asset management and archiving, digital imaging and licensing, publishing and standards. Prior to that, Susan was involved in all aspects of the Met’s scholarly and exhibition publishing program in the museum’s editorial department. She writes and lectures regularly on copyright, publishing, open content initiatives and social software.

Closing Plenary Keynote

"Herd Ahead: The Promising Future for Pachyderm in the Open-Source Community"
Scott Sayre, Sandbox Studios

Synergy is building in the Pachyderm user and development communities with Pachyderm’s entrance into the open-source realm. Linkages to other systems, new features, and innovative uses for the authoring tool are springing up from the community of developers. Looking ahead, key projects and initiatives are poised to pave an exciting future for Pachyderm. Nothing is set in stone, and you and the rest of the community can contribute, share, and change the future as Pachyderm moves ahead.

Scott has over fifteen years of experience guiding museums in the selection, development and application of educational and business technologies. He has spoken internationally and provided consultation to a range of museums. Scott is currently the chair of the Pachyderm Council. In 2002-2003 Scott served as the Art Museum Image Consortium’s (AMICO) Director of Member Services and US Operations. From 1991 - 2002 he was the Director of Media and Technology at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. There he formed and led the museum’s Interactive Media Group in the development of ArtsConnectEd.org (1997), the Institute’s Website artsMIA.org (1993), and sixteen interactive multimedia programs installed throughout the museum’s galleries. Sayre has also served as the Chair of the American Association of Museums’ Media and Technology professional committee. Prior to his work with museums, Sayre held the position of Applications Researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Telecommunications Development Center. He has a Doctorate in Education from the University of Minnesota and also holds a M.Ed. in Training and a B.A. in Visual Communications Technology.

Wednesday Luncheon Plenary Keynote

"Integrating the Arts: Phase Two of a Multi-Year, Multilayer Pachyderm Project"
Kris Wetterlund, Sandbox Studios, Walters Art Museum

This presentation will demonstrate and discuss the second phase of a three-year, large-scale Pachyderm project called Integrating the Arts: Mummies, Manuscripts and Madonnas . This project, being produced for the Walters Art Museum by Sandbox Studios, is based on an interdisciplinary approach for K-12 teachers and students to a select number of ancient, medieval and Renaissance works of art in the Walter’s collection.

Kris has worked with teachers as an art museum educator for the past sixteen years, in the education department at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and as Director of Education at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Wetterlund received her degree in art education from the University of Minnesota and is certified as a K-12 Minnesota teacher. She has served as team leader in the St. Paul Public Schools’ writing of elementary art curriculum. She also served for ten years as museum education representative on the governing board of Art Educators of Minnesota, the state’s professional organization for art teachers. Online art educational resources authored by Wetterlund include the award-winning Get the Picture: Thinking about Photographs. Recently Wetterlund designed and implemented a two-year program to train K-12 teachers throughout Minnesota to use online art museum resources and technology in their classrooms. Wetterlund has also provided services for users of the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO), advising educators who implement AMICO digital art resources in curriculum and teaching. She has also developed a national plan for delivering the Mellon Foundation’s ARTstor project to K-12 teachers and students as a classroom resource.

Thursday Luncheon Plenary Keynote

"Roll Up! Roll Up! The Magical Myth-History Tour"
Holly Witchey, Cleveland Museum of Art

A brief lunchtime journey down a road less traveled by in order to illuminate “the way we do the things to do.” What do James Burke, Douglas Adams, and John Cowper Powys have to do with Pachyderm? More importantly, why are hard-boiled eggs often more useful than sledgehammers in the educational process?

Holly Witchey is currently Director of New Media at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In addition, she serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Museum Computer Network, and is an AAM appointed member to the National Committee for Archives, Libraries, and Museums (CALM). From 2002 -2007 she served as a member of and, eventually, chair of the American Association of Museum’s Media & Technology Standing Professional Committee. For reasons that are still unclear to her, Witchey has a Ph.D. in 15th Century Italian Painting and Sculpture. As Associate Curator of European Art at the San Diego Museum of Art, she began developing contentrich projects for museums using new technologies. In 2000 she left the curatorial world to start the New Media Department at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Witchey writes and speaks about museum ethics, accessibility, and issues that have arisen as a result of the use of new technologies in museum settings. She is the author of three books none of which have anything to do with new media and can be purchased at significantly discounted prices on Amazon.com. They make excellent door stops.