AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

While larger museums move forward with their Time Based Media collections, smaller and mid-size institutions continue to struggle with preservation planning for these complex contemporary works without easy access to media conservators - especially if they are all digital. Maintenance Culture is a project created by Myriad, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, to address challenges related to preserving complex, born-digital, creative works in smaller institutions. From 2022 - 2024, Maintenance Culture brought together creators and maintainers of digital design, web art, time-based media art, virtual reality, and more to address pressing challenges of preserving these works in small institutions. Through a Design Charrette and various working groups, Myriad organized across institutions and disciplines to create events, workshops, and guidelines for creators and maintainers (curators, conservators, librarians, other cultural heritage workers) who preserve digital design, time-based media art, net art, augmented reality, and more. 

Workshops were offered in 6 cities across the U.S., focusing on mid-sized cities including Baltimore, Houston, Detroit, and New Orleans.  Participants included cultural heritage professionals from a wide range of institutions seeking to provide long-term access to complex digital creative works. Participants shared experiences, discussed best practices, and worked across disciplines to consider new solutions for preservation of complex objects.

Project staff had ideas about preserving born-digital works at the start of the project, but the addition of artists’ knowledge provided insights into their creative process, intentions, and skill sets that changed the course of the work. We will share information about the implementation of the project, insights learned through the project, ways that  collaborations with creators shaped the outcomes of the work, and lessons learned. We will include evaluation data showing workshop participants’ achievements and reactions, and we will also talk about the future of Maintenance Culture, which has secured a new round of funding from the NEH and will continue through at least 2026.