Long before Tutankhamun came to rest in the Grand Egyptian Museum last year, the young pharaoh’s artifacts spent decades traveling the world. The National Endowment for the Humanities estimates that over 25 million people have viewed his famous golden funerary mask, and yet few likely considered the feat it took for this 3,000-year-old mask to circumnavigate the world.
Any traveling exhibition, including “King” Tut’s four globetrotting trips, doesn’t move because one person decides it should–it moves because a network of registrars, curators, preparators, shippers, insurers, and venue teams all solve different parts of the same problem at the same time. What looks seamless on the gallery floor is, in fact, the result of dozens of parallel decisions made under tight constraints and timelines.
Historically, this process often involved numerous phone calls and email chains, with back-and-forth exchanges of reports, documents, and spreadsheets. Files were printed and tucked away into drawers, while digital copies were nestled into a labyrinth of subfolders rarely shared outside of individual institutions. But Collector Systems brings the entire process under a single umbrella, making it easy to share and update documents and records from anywhere at any time.
Collector Systems can help with each stage of the exhibition process, including ideation and planning. Using the Exhibitions tab, you can create an exhibition and select any objects from your collection to be included. You can also upload supporting documents for the exhibition, including images, layout, and install notes, and even written materials, like guest curator essays or artist statements.
Once your curatorial team has begun planning, the registrar can add the objects selected in the exhibition inventory to a loan to quickly create multi-institutional exhibits. The Loans tab serves as the hub for coordinating outgoing and incoming loans across institutions. You can track a loan’s status, from information exchange and negotiation, to beginning and end.
As plans are coordinated with other institutions, the loans tab makes updating dates, insurer details, valuation, and special loan conditions effortless. As insurance riders are secured, the documents can easily be added to the associated objects. If a private collector agrees to include a piece and calls to explain they’d like the credit line for all reproductions to list the estate, you can readily note their preferred credit line. Loan agreements, insurance valuations, and condition reports are centrally located and accessible by all stakeholders with the appropriate permissions, by web or mobile app–making collaboration near seamless between registrars, curators, and lenders.
Once a loan is ready to leave your facility, you can select objects within the loan and add them to a shipment, and select the exhibition from a drop-down menu. This feature makes it easy to track object locations, statuses, and timelines in real time. Users can add packing and shipping dates, waybill and address information, contacts, and notes, and generate supporting exhibition checklists and packing documentation. Crate information can be added, ensuring handlers, couriers, and shippers know the correct dimensions and climate requirements of the loan.
As the exhibit moves between venues, users can quickly attach condition reports and images and update object records at each venue transfer. As works move between venues, you can flag reproduction restrictions at the object level and update publication information as the exhibit is promoted, advertised, and reviewed. If objects are traveling abroad, you can store customs, export, and CITES documentation, ensuring every object makes it to the next location without incident.
Once an object has safely made it back to your institution–like Tut making his way back to Cairo–it is easy to reconcile returns and close out location records. Our collection management system ensures consistent documentation across all exhibiting venues and maintains a clear audit trail throughout the loan lifecycle. And if an emergency situation arises–from a damaged crate to a natural disaster–the documentation necessary to handle an emergency is always available at your fingertips.
Collector Systems knows that planning an exhibition is no small feat, but executing a memorable traveling exhibition doesn’t have to be a challenge.
