BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:mcn2026
X-WR-CALDESC:Event Calendar
METHOD:PUBLISH
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
PRODID:-//Sched.com MCN 2026//EN
X-WR-TIMEZONE:UTC
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261021T180000Z
DTEND:20261021T230000Z
SUMMARY:Registration and Badge Pickup
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Level 5 Foyer\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:36858a8cf83d4377defde814a050a50f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/36858a8cf83d4377defde814a050a50f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261021T200000Z
DTEND:20261021T220000Z
SUMMARY:Community Partners Drop-Off / Setup
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Level 5 Foyer\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:36e5d0276f81fef0c2e642bdbd04b050
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/36e5d0276f81fef0c2e642bdbd04b050
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261021T200000Z
DTEND:20261021T220000Z
SUMMARY:Pre-Conference Tours
DESCRIPTION:Details coming soon
CATEGORIES:SPECIAL EVENT
LOCATION:TBD\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:bb600b41dbe1ae5201341a14dd16a07f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/bb600b41dbe1ae5201341a14dd16a07f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261021T221500Z
DTEND:20261021T231500Z
SUMMARY:First-Timers Meetup & SIG Welcome
DESCRIPTION:Whether this is your first\, fifth\, fifteenth\, or fiftieth time attending MCN\,&nbsp\;all&nbsp\;are invited to join us in welcoming the newest members of the MCN community who are attending MCN for the first time. Get loose and break some ice ahead of the evening's Ignite reception.\n\nCash bar\; complimentary light fare will be available\n
CATEGORIES:SPECIAL EVENT
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:3d7f6b7e0d633de2fbd8217b8fe4a6d5
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/3d7f6b7e0d633de2fbd8217b8fe4a6d5
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261021T234500Z
DTEND:20261022T020000Z
SUMMARY:Registration and Badge Pickup
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:The Point at Pier 70\, 2801 Alaskan Wy\, Seattle\, WA 98121
SEQUENCE:0
UID:df5b9feae7a26616c555a22283bea7c2
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/df5b9feae7a26616c555a22283bea7c2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T000000Z
DTEND:20261022T020000Z
SUMMARY:Ignite! Reception
DESCRIPTION:Our signature welcome event\, Ignite\, showcases a series of rapid-fire talks from creative thinkers in the museum field. Expect lots of energy with fresh\, inspiring\, and timely ideas from familiar faces and emerging voices in the field and beyond. Talks follow the “Ignite” format\, in which presenters have five minutes and 20 slides (which advance automatically every 15 seconds) to enlighten\, entertain\, and inspire. Hear from several brave and visionary speakers sharing their experiences in a wide variety of disciplines.&nbsp\;\n\nOne Team: Better Museums Through Collaboration\nMiranda Kerr\n\nLessons In Risk Management from an Avid Baker\nIsabel Cuellar\n\nGetting There: Female Pleasure as a Model for Transformative Museum Experiences\nSarah Wambold\n\nBefore I Tell You What I Learned\nSherman Bausch\n\nCan Technology Replace My Mom?\nNina Callaway\n\nMuseum Network Mycelium Network\nAndrea Montiel de Shuman\n\nCan We Still Trust Digital History\nSonya Norman\n\nHow to Touch Grass\nMaría-Elisa Heg\n\nThis reception is included in the registration cost\; no separate ticket is required. Light appetizers and beverages will be provided. Each attendee will get one drink ticket.\n\n
CATEGORIES:SPECIAL EVENT
LOCATION:The Point at Pier 70\, 2801 Alaskan Wy\, Seattle\, WA 98121
SEQUENCE:0
UID:1b3bd551eceb27b145e3fc07e531d68f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/1b3bd551eceb27b145e3fc07e531d68f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T023000Z
DTEND:20261022T043000Z
SUMMARY:SIG Meetup
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:SPECIAL EVENT
LOCATION:TBD\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:3dfdb7397ccbc14e823e3e7f7ddeff5e
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/3dfdb7397ccbc14e823e3e7f7ddeff5e
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T153000Z
DTEND:20261022T230000Z
SUMMARY:Community Partner Showcase
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Level 5 Foyer\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:4103331f15754bd916535239b0a53fe0
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/4103331f15754bd916535239b0a53fe0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T153000Z
DTEND:20261022T171500Z
SUMMARY:Continental Breakfast
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Quinault Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:95429c6b73291c663de8b71de00ff099
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/95429c6b73291c663de8b71de00ff099
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T153000Z
DTEND:20261022T230000Z
SUMMARY:Registration and Badge Pickup
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Gallery\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:2e15954cf31300e3b8b11b38d2ad3b40
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/2e15954cf31300e3b8b11b38d2ad3b40
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T160000Z
DTEND:20261022T170000Z
SUMMARY:Opening Remarks
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:78771ff96b03b202fbab6171781d7817
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/78771ff96b03b202fbab6171781d7817
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T171500Z
DTEND:20261022T173500Z
SUMMARY:Sustaining Voice: Digital Media\, Indigenous Representation\, and Institutional Trust
DESCRIPTION:Museums have produced video and media for decades—but what does it mean to design media that sustains voice over time? In an era shaped by AI-generated content\, rapid platform change\, and evolving expectations around access\, the question is no longer only how voice is captured. It is also how voice is mediated\, translated\, maintained\, and trusted. This session examines how digital systems and human processes shape how museums represent the voices of artists\, people\, and communities. While many institutions create subject-based videos\, these projects are often treated as one-off assets tied to a specific exhibition or platform. This case study reframes media as infrastructure: a network of decisions across production\, interviewing\, editing\, captioning\, interface design\, playback\, and maintenance. Together\, these decisions determine how voice is experienced\, accessed\, and understood. Drawing from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s Artist Voices video series\, developed as part of the museum’s 2026 expansion reinstallation\, this session explores how museums can design media systems that preserve the integrity of voice across in-gallery video stations\, web platforms\, social media\, and future reuse. The series focuses on living artists\, where voice is collaborative but shaped through many stages of production. Interviewing\, editing\, pacing\, translation\, captioning\, and platform design all influence what is shared\, emphasized\, and sustained. The session will give particular attention to the representation of Indigenous voices within artist-centered media\, including mini-documentaries featuring artists Nicholas Galanin and Lily Hope. In this context\, sustaining voice requires more than recording an interview or presenting an artist’s words. It requires attention to agency\, authorship\, cultural specificity\, and how institutional editing can either preserve complexity or unintentionally flatten it. The framing of questions\, filming relationships\, and edit decisions all shape how Indigenous perspectives are carried forward. A video may begin as a conversation\, but it reaches audiences through layers of editing\, translation\, accessibility\, design\, and institutional decision-making. These choices shape meaning\, access\, and trust. The session will also address practical decisions that support sustainability\, including dual-language open captions\, standardized media formats\, multi-platform design\, consistent playback\, and coordination between content\, design\, technology\, and installation teams. These choices show how accessibility\, consistency\, and technical planning are essential components of ethical digital interpretation. Attendees will leave with strategies for designing digital media as durable systems rather than isolated outputs\, with approaches for balancing authenticity\, accessibility\, longevity\, and audience trust.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:91134bbafc883b557025fa8cddf5671f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/91134bbafc883b557025fa8cddf5671f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T171500Z
DTEND:20261022T180000Z
SUMMARY:From Audience to Author: Remaking Museum Storytelling from the Outside In
DESCRIPTION:What does it mean to build museum digital experiences and storytelling with a community\, rather than for one? Digital storytelling in museums has long promised connection to audiences\, to communities\, to collections. But too often digital becomes a delivery mechanism for the museum's existing narrative. This panel argues for something harder and more necessary. Museums are experiencing a paradigm shift\; audiences have more choices\, more skepticism\, and less patience for institutional voice\, and polarizing political and social challenges have directly impacted and had a chilling effect on the field’s efforts to address whose stories are being told. This panel looks at how three museums across the country respond using digital storytelling\, challenging the power balance between audiences and museums\, and addressing how and where audiences and media take up space within the museum.  These projects aim to decenter the museum’s perspective and prioritize stories and experiences that don’t orbit the object\, the canon\, or the curatorial imperative\, but instead emerge from lived experience. They are not just a way to deliver interpretation\, but show new ways to listen first\, follow the lead of communities\, and truly build trust that leads to shared authorship. The MFA Boston's reimagined 18th-century galleries\, opening June 2026 in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of American Independence\, feature an immersive\, multi-layered in-gallery audio experience designed in close collaboration with a community advisory group.  The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's A Frame of Mind podcast\, uses the museum's collection as a lens to examine belonging\, identity\, race\, and community memory\, using audio storytelling to be genuinely accountable to a moment and to its city. The Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum’s video roundtable featuring Jewish and Christian spiritual leaders and thinkers welcomes visitors to the exhibition "The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt". It models a way to explore the continued relevance of the biblical story of Esther here and now\, when Jewish communities in the US are fractured and Esther has become a tool of Christian nationalism. These digital experiences engage community members as co-authors: shaping both story frameworks and the experience design. Together they ask: what does building trust and connection actually require? How do we know when it's working\, not by our metrics\, but by theirs? And how do we build digital experiences that translate something true about a community's relationship to culture\, history\, and place? These questions sit at the core of what digital storytelling is trying to do and what has become increasingly challenging in the wake of the current political climate. Together\, the panelists will explore the structural\, editorial\, and ethical choices that make community-driven digital storytelling and experience design work\, and where the gaps\, tensions\, and open questions still live.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:444419330634c19d4bb8c596971634f7
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/444419330634c19d4bb8c596971634f7
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T171500Z
DTEND:20261022T180000Z
SUMMARY:The Museum as Experimental Space: Testing AI Interpretation in a Public Setting
DESCRIPTION:Museums are increasingly experimenting with AI-driven interpretation tools\, but what are the possibilities for the museum itself becoming a public laboratory for testing how visitors interact with AI? At the MIT Museum\, one of our strategic goals is to become a public lab for MIT. We have been developing and studying multiple approaches to conversational and embodied AI interpretation\, including: •               A multilingual AI-powered gallery guide •               DebunkBot\, an exhibit exploring misinformation and trust •               An AI-enabled robotic docent and wayfinding experience based on Jibo technology These projects explore how different forms of AI — handheld\, embedded within exhibits\, or physically present in gallery spaces — shape visitor inquiry\, engagement\, trust\, and learning. This interactive session invites participants to examine three distinct AI interpretation models and discuss questions such as: •               Do visitors trust AI differently inside museums? •               Can museums use AI to help visitors think critically about AI itself? •               What forms of AI best support curiosity\, accessibility\, and conversation? •               How can museums ethically conduct live visitor-centered AI experimentation in public spaces? •               How can AI deepen engagement with exhibit content? •               How can museums bring AI into museums to augment the visitor experience without infringing on staff presence and visitor interaction? Participants will break into small groups to explore real-world scenarios drawn from active MIT Museum projects as well as projects from the home museums of session paerticipants. Group conversation will allow cross-pollination of ideas\, best practices\, and lessons learned across the museum field\, as we collaboratively reflect on the opportunities\, tensions\, and future directions of AI in museum environments. Then each group will report out and share their experiences with AI. Session Format: 45-minute interactive session •    15 min framing presentation •    20 min small-group discussion activity •    10 min report-out and synthesis
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:744a451ef2bb2febf813317fb3ba4eed
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/744a451ef2bb2febf813317fb3ba4eed
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T171500Z
DTEND:20261022T180000Z
SUMMARY:Speed Networking
DESCRIPTION:Meet other MCN attendees with some speed networking! A facilitator will guide attendees through a series of breakout conversations. Share with fellow attendees where you're from\, what you're curious about\, and more—just be quick!
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:9a6efd427cde963ac60d976f36948b88
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/9a6efd427cde963ac60d976f36948b88
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T174000Z
DTEND:20261022T180000Z
SUMMARY:A Collection of Relationships
DESCRIPTION:The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is defined by its relationship to the communities and people who are connected to the museum’s collection. Though the museum’s collection of Native items is the largest in the world and contains many artistic and cultural masterpieces\, we strive to let visitors to our museum understand that each of these items is a starting point to cultural understanding. As a museum of living cultural history\, the NMAI has unique challenges to meet our visitors where they are\, provide an engaging experience and to help develop new understandings about Native peoples. We hope to have visitors think about the museum as defined by a collection of relationships as much as a collection of items.\n \n In this short presentation\, Daniel Davis and Melissa Shaginoff will present their work on the Welcome Media project that seeks to highlight the diversity\, hemispheric scope and most importantly the centrality of collaborative relationships that are necessary to build the trust with Native communities who teach us how to present their culture and to care for the items in our collection. The Welcome Media project is a series of short films that will show daily at our museum in Washington DC and in New York beginning in the fall of 2026. The films were designed to be interchangeable allowing the museum to add additional stories to the cycle in the future. Through findings from an ongoing visitor study by HG and Co\, we learned that most visitors appreciated knowing more about the Museum’s relationship with Native communities. The study found that a few visitors expressed skepticism that these relationships were truly deep and authentic\, and we feel the Welcome Media project should help to resolve these lingering doubts.\n \n At a time when social media’s engagement obsession has made it feel like the truth no longer matters and the use of artificial intelligence has given rise to mistrust of science and expertise\, this project will emphasize the real time commitment to building relationships with our Native and non-Native constituents. We believe that by showing how the museum works and allowing visitors to hear directly from contemporary Native people\, visitors that experience our museums will have a greater trust and in what they learn during their visit. Further\, by realigning visitor’s expectations and helping them to realize that they are part of a network of connection through the items they see on view\, they can have a richer and more impactful experience that may change how they see Native people today.\n \n In this presentation\, we will present data from our visitor studies testing messages and understanding our visitor’s expectations\, explain the development of a modular film cycle that can be revised and adjusted in the daily screenings\, profile how the team made decisions about which communities to feature and show clips from the final media products.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5184c5b792ca3eab1263fe951fcf8d56
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/5184c5b792ca3eab1263fe951fcf8d56
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T180000Z
DTEND:20261022T181500Z
SUMMARY:Refreshment Break
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Level 5 Foyer\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:f692567e0a6b6a11d148c2a7b352f018
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/f692567e0a6b6a11d148c2a7b352f018
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T181500Z
DTEND:20261022T183500Z
SUMMARY:Going Beyond the Exhibition: Harnessing Virtual Tours for Preservation and Community Care
DESCRIPTION:This session will look at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC)’s first 3D virtual tour as a case study for how museums can leverage technology to increase the longevity of short-term exhibitions while also enhancing the digital experience through community-centered interpretation and input. In 2024\, APAC opened its first exhibition in nearly 10 years called Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond\, curated by Sojin Kim with support from Adriel Luis and Mia Owens. Sightlines was open from September 2024 to November 2025 and focused on the impact Asian Americans had on the physical and cultural landscape of Washington\, DC.  The featured stories highlight examples of cultural production that interpret elements of Chinese\, Korean\, and Javanese heritage and express coalitional Asian American and BIPOC identities. These are presented in displays of artwork\, material culture\, images\, and other graphic material drawn from Smithsonian collections as well as shared by local lenders\, including community members and repositories such as the DC History Center and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. In order to preserve this exhibition in a dynamic and engaging way\, we sought to create a self-guided 3D tour where visitors could explore the gallery as if they were physically there. To enhance their digital visit\, the virtual exhibition was embedded with exclusive interviews from community members who loaned or had connections to objects shown in the exhibition. There are 27 individual audio clips throughout the virtual tour\, full transcripts\, and related resources for visitors to take a deeper dive into topics mentioned in the interviews.  By attending this session\, attendees will learn more about the overall exhibition\, the internal discussions had to greenlight the 3D virtual tour\, the design and technical decisions made to ensure longevity of the tour and exhibition integrity\, and the community care necessary to ensure its success. There will be a brief portion at the end on how we've activated the virtual tour for educational purposes already and the reaction from community members\, educators\, and students. Lastly\, there will be a sneak peak of our upcoming 3D Tour for APAC’s newest exhibition - How Can You Forget Me: Filipino American Stories.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5a0343eace181a693fdafc596ad257d5
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/5a0343eace181a693fdafc596ad257d5
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T181500Z
DTEND:20261022T183500Z
SUMMARY:Trust\, Built Locally: A Library's Archive AI
DESCRIPTION:Most AI-for-archives work in GLAM comes from engineers at vendor companies or well-resourced institutional AI teams. This session is a practitioner case study from a different corner: a public library manager — without an engineering background or an in-house AI team — building local-first AI infrastructure for a rights-sensitive regional broadcast archive. The Northeast Ohio Broadcast Archives (NEOBA) are roughly 10\,000–15\,000 hours of regional broadcast footage. A digitized slice of 349 tapes from 1977–1982 served as the starting material. Cloud AI services were off the table — rights posture\, institutional trust\, and the sensitivity of local-community material all pointed to local-first processing\, as did the budget and staffing reality of a public library. Two artifacts will be demonstrated. The first is a local AI pipeline running on a single M-series Mac: scene detection\, segment-level visual description (Gemma 4 E4B)\, transcription (mlx-whisper)\, face and entity detection (InsightFace)\, and Dublin-Core catalog synthesis (Gemma 4 26B A4B). The second is a public-facing Archive Explorer surfacing 14\,242 classified items\, 3\,446 extracted entities\, and 292 semantic clusters — with narrative threads and an AI-assisted chat interface for natural-language discovery that let someone unfamiliar with the collection begin exploring from any angle. Both are examined honestly: what local-first bought in institutional trust\, what it cost in throughput and fidelity\, where contemporary AI tools extended what a small library team could do — and where they did not. The session also takes up a question the theme invites directly: as AI capability becomes cheaper and more locally runnable\, who gets to build it\, for whose collections\, at whose institutions? A non-engineer practitioner working from a single workstation inside a public library is an unlikely builder profile for this work in 2026 — and that unlikelihood is part of the point. Attendees leave with a reference implementation for local AI in a rights-sensitive archival setting\, a set of trade-off conversations worth having before cloud-defaulting\, and a practitioner perspective on AI-augmented work at institutions whose starting posture is not that of a cloud-first AI lab.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:1006ea37d40619ee4dc9036cac5f11e4
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/1006ea37d40619ee4dc9036cac5f11e4
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T181500Z
DTEND:20261022T190000Z
SUMMARY:Digital Strategy Case Studies from Three Museums: Aligning Plans\, People\, and Practice
DESCRIPTION:Digital strategy is an evolving process shaped by institutional culture\, leadership\, resources\, risk tolerance\, and changing technologies. The processes by which digital strategies are created\, communicated\, and sustained are highly consequential to the goals they articulate if those goals are to reach fruition.  This session longitudinally examines digital strategy development\, drawing on experiences from three museums at different stages of their digital strategic journeys. Presenters will trace the lifecycle of their digital strategy work from initial efforts to identify and formalize digital priorities\, through implementation and evaluation following a strategy’s launch. Princeton University Art Museum is crafting its first full digital strategy while awaiting a new museum strategic framework to be developed (starting Summer 2026). Frances Lloyd-Baynes and Jill Oster\, authors of the draft strategy\, will explore the challenges of developing a digital strategy in a vacuum with no active organizational goals on which to anchor\, and in support of a brand new museum undergoing a major digital transformation. Staff at the NC Museum of Art are working to create a digital resource roadmap in response to an overarching strategic plan for 2026 - 2030. Currently in writing by a digital governance committee\, the digital plan aspires to codify museum technologies (software\, platforms)\, operating procedures (asset creation\, management)\, quality standards (WCAG)\, and an evaluation framework for digital products to support efficient and reliable access to high quality digital experiences by audiences.  Spencer Museum is an example of an organization with a digital operational strategy in place reporting on how the deliverables have matched their goals for it and supported their work in practice. The Spencer Museum of Art Digital Plan plan was created in 2022 as a result of three years of planning\, research\, and auditing all digital platforms with Design for Context and One Further with support from the Mellon Foundation. Since launching they have updated the entire plan once (2024)\, and do 6-month reviews and progress reports for the entire staff. Our three organizational case studies aim to articulate (1) circumstances that prompt organizations to pursue digital strategy planning\, (2) how digital strategies intersect with (existing) institutional strategy documents\, governance structures\, and day-to-day operations\, (3) the roles and personalities most critical to digital strategic decision-making\, as well as those most affected by its implementation\, and (4) core components of a written digital strategy\, and how these have evolved over time.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:d1b388a8ade54c9ce35c5c27c4ee00a3
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/d1b388a8ade54c9ce35c5c27c4ee00a3
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T181500Z
DTEND:20261022T190000Z
SUMMARY:Reclaiming Your Digital Infrastructure
DESCRIPTION:As museum professionals\, we all deeply understand the benefits and challenges of relying on third party technology to help us get stuff done—especially when it comes to bringing the collection online. This often means that: we don’t own our infrastructure\, solutions aren’t built for purpose\, and new feature requests may never get built. With the rise of vibe coding and agentic development\, we are now entering an era where it’s faster and easier than ever to build what we need ourselves. What if the future of museum technology could be owned\, light weight\, and flexible? In this session\, hear from the Menil Collection\, the Whitney Museum\, the Lucas Museum\, museum consultant Chad Weinard\, and agency partner AREA 17 on experiments in DIY application development\, open source\, and the future of the museum tech stack.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a55367047831cfeb5144c7af66aecf84
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/a55367047831cfeb5144c7af66aecf84
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T184000Z
DTEND:20261022T190000Z
SUMMARY:Assessing and implementing new AI workflows in the identification and description of artworks.
DESCRIPTION:This session will provide an overview of the Museum of Modern Art’s implementation of new artificial intelligence tools in support of its access and accessibility priorities. The discussion will detail the decision-making involved in assessing and judiciously integrating AI into workflows\, focusing on the identification and description of art assets. The presentation will recount three projects: identifying artworks in installation images\; generating alt-text descriptions for images\; and transcribing media assets with AI\, as well as touching on available AI tools the Museum deemed as unsuitable or inappropriate for use.\n \n This talk will address considerations applicable to other GLAM environments\, from the specific challenges of working with a corpus of complex Modern Art material to assessing the suitability\, accuracy\, and resource expenditure involved in using artificial intelligence tools. The session will also detail the Museum-specific issues influencing the design and viability of the tools used\, and consider the degree to which these models are replicable in other environments. In keeping with the conference's focus on Trust and Longevity\, we will discuss the benefits of augmenting and repurposing Museum data to create a more expansive and trustworthy record of MoMA’s exhibition activity\, and provide information for colleagues in the field weighing the costs and benefits of using AI in collections management.\n \n This session would be well-suited for incorporation into a longer panel focused on institutional workflows\, new platform adoption\, or the experimental use of artificial intelligence tools in GLAM settings.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:333e31e41bfdcdbac0fdd6175cb353e6
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/333e31e41bfdcdbac0fdd6175cb353e6
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T184000Z
DTEND:20261022T190000Z
SUMMARY:From Novelty to Necessity: A Pressure Test for Museum XR
DESCRIPTION:Museums have explored XR in different forms\, from AR tours and VR exhibitions to immersive games\, WebXR\, and digital storytelling experiences. But many projects still struggle to move beyond novelty\, short-term pilots\, or one-time funding. For small and mid-sized institutions especially\, the challenge is not simply adopting immersive technology\, but choosing approaches that are meaningful to audiences\, responsible to the stories being told\, and sustainable for teams over time. This session introduces a practical “XR pressure test” for evaluating museum XR ideas before major resources are committed. Adapted from cross-platform immersive learning work in cultural storytelling and education\, the framework begins with a Spatial Necessity Test: what can audiences understand through embodied presence\, participation\, or spatial context that they could not understand as well through text\, images\, video\, or a traditional website? From there\, the talk expands into a series of planning questions around audience value\, interpretive responsibility\, accessibility\, platform fit\, maintenance\, and long-term institutional capacity. Using brief examples from social AR\, VR learning environments\, and AI-assisted production workflows\, the session will show how museums can distinguish between XR concepts that are strategically justified and those driven mainly by novelty. It will also address common risks in museum XR planning\, including platform dependency\, unclear success metrics\, limited accessibility\, content that requires careful cultural context\, and pilot projects that are exciting at launch but difficult to sustain. Attendees will leave with a lightweight decision framework they can bring back to planning meetings\, grant conversations\, vendor discussions\, or internal strategy sessions. A take-home “Museum XR Pressure Test Worksheet” will help teams decide whether an XR idea should be built\, simplified\, postponed\, or reframed into a more sustainable format.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:2c056212c517311f1994dab8774d9e7a
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/2c056212c517311f1994dab8774d9e7a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T190000Z
DTEND:20261022T201500Z
SUMMARY:Lunch Break
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:
LOCATION:Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:2efbcc79957a0a03b7bf061d0f4ae5cd
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/2efbcc79957a0a03b7bf061d0f4ae5cd
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T201500Z
DTEND:20261022T203500Z
SUMMARY:The Art of Conversation: Designing an AI Companion Visitors Trust — and Enjoy
DESCRIPTION:This summer\, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art launched the first version of its very own AI Companion App designed to help visitors identify works of art and have a rich conversation about what they’re seeing—all with artificial intelligence. One major question we had to answer: can a conversational AI experience\, even one designed in partnership with the museum’s curatorial staff\, be trusted as a real-time visitor companion? In this highly practical and engaging 45‑minute session\, Stace Treat - Director of Interpretation - and Amanda Boomstra - Strategic advisor for museums - will share the product and institutional decisions required to make AI experiences trustworthy\, deeply engaging\, and built to scale beyond the current collection. Our starting point is always visitor value: we build what genuinely enhances the experience\, not what simply showcases technology.  We’ll cover the end-to-end approach: shaping a companion personality and conversation design that mirrors natural turns in human conversation\; the challenges of grounding responses in legacy collections data\; and designing accessible\, inclusive interaction patterns that feel familiar to every user. Attendees will leave with clear takeaways for pairing data foundations\, governance\, and UX transparency to sustain trust in AI-driven interpretation over time.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e6fa86cbba401ad0f30ac511ecc3f88f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/e6fa86cbba401ad0f30ac511ecc3f88f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T201500Z
DTEND:20261022T210000Z
SUMMARY:F***\,Marry\,Kill: Guidelines for Determining the Lifespan of a Digital Project
DESCRIPTION:Most digital projects don’t end with a bang. Instead\, content slowly becomes outdated\, snazzy features become obsolete\, and the website redesign gets pushed back (again) due to budget cuts\, which leaves users to rely on information that’s quietly wrong. In this 45-minute talk\, we’ll give real-world examples of the decision-making frameworks we’ve used to determine whether to “f***/marry/kill” a digital project and its content. Attendees will leave with criteria and key considerations for planning and sunsetting short-\, medium-\, and long-term projects\, as well as guidance on managing stakeholder expectations along the way. They’ll also leave with the understanding that public trust isn’t just built by what we launch\, but maintained by what we keep accurate\, usable\, and accessible. Erin Cecele Dunigan will discuss Getty’s digital governance model and decision flowchart for determining whether a project should be a temporary bespoke website or a long-lasting digital Quire publication. Sarah Luken will discuss the loose framework she uses at the Corning Museum of Glass to decide when to build a short-term microsite or decade-long digital interactive. Mara Kurlandsky will discuss the process and rubric she created for conducting website content audits for her clients\, which have included both small non-profits as well as large national museums. Drawing from a variety of professional perspectives—from an independent contractor to a large museum with 1\,200+ employees to a medium-sized arts organization—this talk will delve into the complexities of deciding when to maintain\, archive\, or sunset projects and content. Attendees will leave with actionable advice on setting manageable expectations\, planning for the future\, and getting stakeholders on board with the realities of a digital project’s finite lifespan.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5c7fe01fc330d113fee070584df403d5
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/5c7fe01fc330d113fee070584df403d5
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T201500Z
DTEND:20261022T210000Z
SUMMARY:From Metadata to Meaning: AI and the Future of Online Collections
DESCRIPTION:As AI rapidly reshapes user expectations of digital products\, museums face a pivotal question: how do we thoughtfully evolve our online collection interfaces — and where do we invest first?\n \n Do we prioritize AI-powered search? AI-augmented records? Or user-facing conversational features that invite visitors to explore collections on their own terms? Each path carries different implications for trust\, accuracy\, and long-term sustainability.\n \n Panelists will share real-world collection redesign projects\, their frameworks for evaluating AI features and functionality\, and their roadmaps for future integration. We'll also explore what becomes possible when we think beyond institutional boundaries — sharing technical approaches\, case studies\, and object data across institutions.\n \n This is a panel for practitioners actively building\, experimenting\, and wrestling with these decisions. Join us for an honest conversation about tradeoffs\, priorities\, and what it means to design collection experiences for a world where AI isn't a feature — it's an expectation.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:9b5df87217c387b5c5a7e272fd89a967
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/9b5df87217c387b5c5a7e272fd89a967
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T201500Z
DTEND:20261022T210000Z
SUMMARY:Sponsor Session
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:2fcc6f498baad8ead74ef01298a2b601
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/2fcc6f498baad8ead74ef01298a2b601
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T204000Z
DTEND:20261022T210000Z
SUMMARY:AI with Intention: The Kelp Desk Story
DESCRIPTION:As aquariums expand digital touchpoints across the guest journey\, visitors expect fast\, accurate access to information. At the Monterey Bay Aquarium\, we introduced the Kelp Desk chatbot to help guests quickly find answers across our website.  But deploying a chatbot isn’t just a technical issue\; it’s a trust exercise.  In this session\, we’ll share what it takes to design\, launch\, and sustain a chatbot that supports the guest experience. We’ll cover how content quality impacts AI performance\, what’s required to maintain accuracy over time\, and how to manage a chatbot within existing resources. With real-life grounded lessons\, this session focuses on both the opportunities and limitations of AI in a mission-driven environment.  Attendees will leave with practical insight on how to implement and sustain a chatbot in a way that builds long-term trust with their digital audiences.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:06d461e06b3282bd0f727350a94f20fc
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/06d461e06b3282bd0f727350a94f20fc
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T211500Z
DTEND:20261022T213500Z
SUMMARY:Designing Trust: Art\, Voice\, and Difficult Histories
DESCRIPTION:Trust is not built by content alone. It is built by the systems that shape how content is commissioned\, interpreted\, delivered\, and sustained over time. This case study examines Love in a Dangerous Time: Canada’s LGBT Purge\, a major exhibition at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and recipient of the 2026 Governor General’s Award for Excellence in Museums. The exhibition addresses one of the largest workplace human rights violations in Canadian history\, telling the story of how more than 9\,000 2SLGBTQI+ members of the Canadian Armed Forces\, RCMP\, and federal public service were investigated\, harassed\, and fired by the Canadian state. As exhibition lead responsible for design and integration\, I worked across artistic collaboration\, survivor testimony\, interaction design\, and institutional systems to build an experience audiences could trust. That meant more than producing compelling media. It required aligning commissioned artworks\, voice-driven interactives\, accessible design protocols\, and narrative architecture into a coherent framework that could hold trauma\, complexity\, and public scrutiny without collapsing into spectacle. For MCN’s theme of Trust & Longevity\, this session argues that trust in museum technology is inseparable from governance\, accessibility\, and care. Voice interfaces\, immersive media\, and artist-led commissions can deepen engagement\, but only when supported by ethical decision-making\, inclusive design\, and infrastructure built for endurance rather than novelty. Drawing on this project and related work in voice interaction\, inclusive design\, and enterprise digital governance\, I will offer a practical framework for using technology to support difficult histories in ways that are credible now and sustainable over time.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:db061dd8d7869952484e4d951983695a
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/db061dd8d7869952484e4d951983695a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T211500Z
DTEND:20261022T220000Z
SUMMARY:Art in 3D: A multi-institutional perspective on 3D in museums
DESCRIPTION:Over the past decade\, we’ve gone from 3D capture and display in museums being a difficult\, niche offering to something our own visitors can do on their own. And yet\, like all emerging technologies\, we’re still bogged down by lack of standards\, uneven literacy\, ongoing technical progress\, and resourcing challenges. As many institutions move beyond pilot projects\, a key challenge has become how to operationalize 3D imaging as a sustained program—balancing workflow standardization\, staffing\, and long-term infrastructure needs.   This panel will explore common threads\, best practices\, insights\, and “what’s next” in 3D imaging. Each museum (Cleveland Museum of Art\, The Met\, and National Gallery of Art) will share the origins and intents of its program\; key insights gathered from doing this work\; and use-cases for 3D models. We will also touch on how institutions make decisions about what to scan\, and how selection strategies evolve from individual highlight objects to more cohesive\, comparative groups that better support research and interpretation. While this is not a technical panel\, we will touch on some best practices such as ways to target wide distribution on the web vs sharing for pedagogical study vs scanning to aid conservation treatment and records. Since we are all art museums\, we’ll discuss issues particular to art\, including copyright concerns\, whether one should scan 2D works\, and the like. After brief presentations\, we will have a panel discussion and invite questions and comments from the audience.   Each museum on this panel has deep expertise in 3D imaging their respective collections and applying 3D to a wide range of applications. We also represent well-resourced museums\, and we want to make clear to our audience ways others can build upon our work\, without needing the same level of investment of people\, time\, and money and to reflect on how these approaches adapt and evolve as programs scale.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a8729761ecf4b088d24805cc87aeacc4
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/a8729761ecf4b088d24805cc87aeacc4
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T211500Z
DTEND:20261022T220000Z
SUMMARY:Collections Online in 3.5 Months: An Honest Look
DESCRIPTION:In early 2026\, LACMA shipped Collections Online — a public search and discovery site for the museum's collection — in roughly 3.5 months from kickoff to launch. The team was small (LACMA's digital team of two) and the work was deeply collaborative across overlapping skills: LACMA's Senior Director of Publishing — portfolio across editorial\, design\, and web/digital — anchoring the experience perspective and the internal advocacy that kept the work aligned across the organization\; an independent backend engineer on the data platform application\; the Folder Design team behind the visual design system and reference demos\; the Urban Insight team behind the Netlify-hosted Next.js front end — search integration\, frontend architecture\, performance\, and the discovery experience\; and LACMA's Director of Digital Strategy & Infrastructure\, who architected the overall environment and built the systems around the data platform (image\, AI\, search\, monitoring\, admin tooling\, data flows)\, iterated on intent\, and held day-to-day validation\, troubleshooting\, and coordination. At the center sits a custom data platform — a FastAPI on ECS application backed by PostgreSQL/RDS — that ingests eleven TMS SQL views (about 1.1 million rows per cycle) plus 119\,000 AI-enriched records from DynamoDB\, applies user-defined transformation rulesets\, and publishes through REST\, GraphQL\, and a bulk OpenSearch index. Two VPCs joined by peering\, schema/rules admin UI\, 6-hour ingest cadence with admin-triggered refresh. A Lambda + SQS image processing pipeline moves 68\,000 image-bearing objects (and derivatives) into KMS-encrypted S3. An AI enrichment layer — a SageMaker-hosted SigLIP 2 vision model run ephemerally on g5.xlarge\, plus a long-running EC2 service for visual descriptions\, embeddings\, and search-time text encoding — produces the metadata for hybrid vector search and accessibility. An OpenSearch cluster handles faceted keyword search. A pair of admin tools — diagnostic Lookups and editorial Overrides — keep curatorial\, engineering\, and the data pipeline honest about what is surfacing on the site. On the frontend\, Next.js + Netlify deliver the public experience\, CDN-optimized for scale. - End-to-End Architecture: the AWS/FastAPI stack\, frontend delivery\, and operations — with cost and performance numbers for each piece. - The Reality of AI-Assisted Engineering: where Claude and Gemini delivered 10x acceleration\, where they introduced subtle costly bugs\, and where we reverted to traditional engineering. - Operationalizing AI: prompt engineering\, agent-based workflows\, and the scaffolding that makes AI-assisted work repeatable across a hybrid team. In this session\, we break down both the technical architecture and the collection discovery experience behind the build\, sharing key architectural decisions\, tradeoffs\, lessons learned\, and our playbook\, including: The goal is to share a working playbook\, with the rough edges visible\, for any institution considering a similar build.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:62062dd17f07498165f4ce8fcca5979f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/62062dd17f07498165f4ce8fcca5979f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T211500Z
DTEND:20261022T220000Z
SUMMARY:The Enduring Practice of Participatory Engagement
DESCRIPTION:In 2026\, crowdsourcing methodologies are not considered "new and innovative." However\, the erosion of public trust and proliferation of AI-generated content give these methodologies new and greater significance. Far from being made irrelevant by emerging tech\, crowdsourcing and collaboration are more important than ever to balance thoughtful use of advanced computing techniques and engage audiences that are increasingly skeptical of authoritative narratives.  Participatory engagement invites audiences to take ownership of the preservation and diffusion of knowledge. Such programs reinscribe the museum’s role as steward\, rather than owner\, of memory and learning. As hosts and facilitators\, museums empower experts\, scholars\, and members of the public to create community in pursuit of a common goal\, facilitating inter- and intragenerational connections through lifelong learning.   On this panel\, speakers share their methodologies for two crowdsourcing activities: Wikipedia edit-a-thons led by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum and Lost Women of Science\; and Freedmen’s Bureau transcribe-a-thons led by Smithsonian Transcription Center and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.   Through these two event formats\, organizers create communal spaces for participants to learn and practice\, with guidance and encouragement from experts and one another. These projects illuminate women’s and African American history by empowering the public to engage directly with primary and secondary sources and take an active role in the discoverability of science and cultural heritage data. Here\, crowdsourcing builds trust by offering an opportunity to contribute that promotes a fuller understanding of historical sources and how history is documented\, preserved\, and shared.  This session will discuss how participatory engagement can be a catalyst for endurance and sustainability in the maintenance of public trust. These methodologies also serve as both counterbalance to and critical partner for responsible AI-supported methodologies. How can a museum balance goals of completion with goals of participation? How can we make complex and detail-oriented processes approachable and appealing to broad audiences? What is the unique value of human-generated contributions in the current moment?  Attendees will learn about the importance of developing multiple points of access to ensure accessibility and engagement across audiences and consider models for building trust\, community\, and an enduring practice. They’ll consider the critical role presenters play in engaging audiences and the emerging relationship between AI and crowdsourcing work. Panelists will discuss the strategies for designing crowdsourcing projects and programs that appeal across generations and cultures. Attendees will also learn about models for collaboration involving both internal and external partners.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:7fd3408b9658b8e56ef09819251ac05b
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/7fd3408b9658b8e56ef09819251ac05b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T214000Z
DTEND:20261022T220000Z
SUMMARY:Digital Governance at Getty
DESCRIPTION:You work with dozens of brilliant colleagues\, all with amazing ideas about how technology might revolutionize your organization. You also want to sleep sometimes. How do you choose what to work on?  How do you prioritize?  How do you say no to the chief curator?  At Getty\, we’ve spent the past three years building a process to help us answer these questions and provide a framework for digital decision-making. We’d like to share with you the Digital Governance process we’ve put in place\, what we’ve learned\, and how we moved (at least closer) to transparent\, inclusive\, collaborative decision-making\, and how we continue to evolve that process as organizational needs\, technologies\, and expectations evolve.  Also—AI governance!  David Newbury and Britt Scholnick will share how we developed the framework\, both from a strategic and practical level\, how we’ve iterated over the past 18 months\, and where we expect it to change in the future. We’ll discuss balancing IT and Digital needs\, the value of discovery processes\, how we consider capacity planning\, and the importance of happy hours to team building.  And we’ll share how governance can function not (only) as a gatekeeping mechanism\, but as a living system that supports sustainability\, transparency\, and builds institutional resilience.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:002463e6ad15a4bb2429fdce52472986
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/002463e6ad15a4bb2429fdce52472986
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T220000Z
DTEND:20261022T221500Z
SUMMARY:Refreshment Break
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Level 5 Foyer\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:6271f8e7e0e6f7828c84f95cbfe80779
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/6271f8e7e0e6f7828c84f95cbfe80779
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T221500Z
DTEND:20261022T223500Z
SUMMARY:Magical\, Tactile Media Devices: Creating Digital Experiences that Feel Anything But
DESCRIPTION:In our museum\, traditional wall interpretation provides the vital foundation of our guests’ experience. However\, when planning our digital interpretation\, our team is always asking: What can digital do that is different? This session explores creating “MTMDs” (Magical\, Tactile Media Devices)—physical objects with digital content that guests interact with in ways that feel anything but digital. By focusing on what digital does best—recreating sensory "time and place"—we can provide a richer\, more multi-dimensional experience. Phase I: More Than Voiceover (William Gropper Exhibition) Our exploration began by moving beyond the lecture-style audio tour. For an exhibition on William Gropper\, we developed a "contextual soundscape" to sit alongside the curatorial text. By re-recording period-accurate union songs and dramatic re-enactments of Gropper’s appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee\, we provided the emotional high stakes of the period\, allowing visitors to hear the history they were reading about. Phase II: The Tactile Bridge (The Mucha Record Player) We expanded this approach for our exhibition Timeless Mucha by introducing a custom hi-fi record player cabinet powered by RFID technology. This device allowed guests to listen to the music of albums whose cover art was inspired by Alphonse Mucha’s work. By using familiar\, tactile hardware\, we reduced placed the digital tech in the background\, and put the guests tactile experience in the foreground.  Phase III: Immersive Simulation (The Miró TV Time Capsule) Our most recent project\, a glowing 1950s television set for Miró and the United States\, represents the synthesis of these strategies. To provide a unique experience of the 1940s–60s\, we engaged a woodworker to build a period-accurate cabinet that matched the original furniture of our museum. On this TV\, each channel represents a year Miró visited the U.S.\, allowing guests to "channel surf" through collages of cultural touchpoints like the Space Race and the Civil Rights Movement. Accompanied by a 1950s-style “TV Guide” handout\, the interactive was placed in our Welcome Gallery to serve as an inflection point\, drawing guests into the exhibition narrative the moment they enter the building. Conclusion: Throwing Your Hat Over the Wall Innovation in museum tech often requires "throwing your hat over a wall" that is too high to climb—committing to a project before you fully know how to execute it. These projects involved a multitude of firsts for our department and institution from programming Arduino boards to coding in Python and using Touch Designer. We argue that the most impactful museum experiences come from making mistakes and "building rockets to see if they explode". By diversifying the modes of interpretation we create an inclusive environment that recognizes the unique strengths of both the written word and the sensory interactive.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5ea684fcb2ac82ad79b1849348046b24
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/5ea684fcb2ac82ad79b1849348046b24
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T221500Z
DTEND:20261022T230000Z
SUMMARY:Neither Here Nor There: Musetech as Ecotone
DESCRIPTION:Museum technologists work in ecotones — the biological term for transition zones where two ecosystems meet\, like where forest gives way to meadow. Ecotones are the most biodiverse and most generative zones in nature. Yet\, also the most precarious. Museum digital work lives on exactly this kind of edge: between conservation and innovation\, between the tech sector's velocity and museums’ slower cycles of change. What happens in ecotones directly impacts the heart of an ecosystem: edge activities can augment institutional capacity to adapt and survive in rapidly evolving conditions. Sustainability\, in this context\, is not green-IT compliance. It is the question of how museum workers can keep showing up in the in-between. Human sustainability is what institutional longevity depends on. In museums\, we talk about long-term stewardship of collections\, platforms\, and knowledge\, but rarely about long-term stewardship of the people doing that work. A technologist who stays in the field across decades\, who carries institutional memory\, who maintains trust with their colleagues and their public — that person is a longevity infrastructure. This 45-minute Imagination Bootcamp explores sustainability in the in-between by taking the conference hotel itself as material. Hotels are liminal by design — full of people in transit\, between homes\, between meetings\, neither here nor there. They are also stacked with overlooked ecotones: lobby thresholds\, service corridors\, and\, in this case\, a green roof where infrastructure meets living systems. This experiential session invites participants to use the metaphor of ecotones as a way of imagining new dynamics and structures for digital museum work. We will move through a short somatic warm-up that tunes awareness of immediate surroundings\, a site-based practice that connects us to generations of workers and guests who have moved through this building\, and a small-group exercise that extends attention to the more-than-human world sharing the space with us. The Bootcamp draws on participants’ lived experience\, futures literacy\, and embodiment. Dr. Marina Gross-Hoy's research into museum professional ecosystems as ecotones — sites of cross-sectoral collaboration shaped by the fundamental paradox between conservation and communication – is the foundation. Imagination is trained here like a muscle: through attention\, body\, and place\, rather than through forecast or scenario. Participants will leave with a felt sense of their own ecotones\, a small artifact from the session\, and an imagination practice they can carry into their work. The Bootcamp is designed for technologists who suspect that the most urgent infrastructure question is not which platform to adopt next\, but how to remain imaginative\, embodied\, and trustworthy across the long arc of institutional change. No previous experience with somatic practice\, futures methods\, or speculative design is required. Comfortable shoes for walking are recommended.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:9131f25e737857b1f723a14d98dd402a
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/9131f25e737857b1f723a14d98dd402a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T221500Z
DTEND:20261022T230000Z
SUMMARY:Why Is This Even Here? Power\, Interpretation\, and Shared Authority in the Museum
DESCRIPTION:In March 2026\, the RISD Museum opened Ways of Looking\, an introductory gallery that orients visitors to the museum while offering tools for engaging with artwork (https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/ways-looking). This project departs from standard museum practice: it was led by interpretation and education staff rather than curators\; it spans two galleries but presents only three artworks\, prioritizing close engagement\; and it positions the visitor’s response as not only valid\, but essential. Works of art\, collection research\, and visitors’ contributions are presented with equal weight in the space\, creating a collaborative experience.  This session explores how power is constructed and distributed in museum collections\, curation\, and interpretation. Using Ways of Looking as a case study\, participants will examine practical strategies for sharing authority with visitors. Attendees will learn how interpretation and technological interventions can disrupt traditional narratives and create more inclusive museum experiences. In one gallery\, we created a drawing space with projections\, drawing prompts\, and a pegboard for displaying visitor responses. In another\, two audio pieces introduced perspectives from an artist and a security guard. Presented through spatial audio and a landline phone turned into an audio player/recorder\, these works created a communal listening experience while inviting visitors to record their questions. We made explicit what museum professionals often leave implicit\, including how to read labels and how to interpret works of art. We presented four key ideas as springboards for interpretation: process\, meanings\, origins\, and connections. Curiosity and play were embedded throughout the design\, encouraging engagement across ages and levels of familiarity. Visitors often enter museums unsure how to look at art\, what questions to ask\, or how to do a museum “right\,” leading to a lack of confidence or connection. The RISD Museum is one of the few publicly accessible spaces within a larger academic institution. We aim to share knowledge rather than gatekeep it. Visitors should understand that a museum is a network of people with varied skills and perspectives\, not a monolith. Through this space\, we aim to build trust between the institution and its visitors. Trust is a two-way exchange: museum professionals must build credibility through accessible\, transparent experiences\, and Ways of Looking includes resources visitors can carry beyond the galleries. At the same time\, institutions must demonstrate trust in visitors’ experiences\, questions\, and creative insight. This reciprocity is expressed through tools like the landline message system\, as well as more formal feedback that directly informs future experiences. This space operationalizes the values laid out in our strategic plan: becoming more welcoming\, curious\, collaborative\, and bold. A strategic plan should not sit on a shelf\; it should be felt in practice.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:03ab2b831e4dbcea0da6537482a36816
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/03ab2b831e4dbcea0da6537482a36816
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T221500Z
DTEND:20261022T230000Z
SUMMARY:Will GenAI kill the website as we know it?
DESCRIPTION:The rise of generative AI interfaces\, from conversational search to autonomous agents\, is quietly dismantling some of the most foundational assumptions of web publishing. Traffic patterns are shifting. Zero-click interactions are rising. Content that once drove users to a website is increasingly consumed before a visit ever happens. This panel session explores what these changes mean in practice for organizations that have invested heavily in their web presence: how to think about visibility in an AI-mediated landscape\, what "reach" means when your content is an input to someone else's model\, and how the role of the website is changing from destination to signal. The death of the website is the wrong question\, but the right instinct: what is actually dying is a set of assumptions about how people find\, access\, and relate to content online. Rather than declaring the website dead\, this panel makes the case for a more nuanced transition that requires content strategists\, developers\, and digital leaders to fundamentally rethink what a website is for.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:8f3675fca2bb6790759a08f86904dec0
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/8f3675fca2bb6790759a08f86904dec0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261022T224000Z
DTEND:20261022T230000Z
SUMMARY:Mondrian at MoMA: Crafting interactive narratives from scientific research
DESCRIPTION:For an upcoming exhibition on the artist Piet Mondrian\, MoMA is using digital technology to present conservation research that unfolds some of the major narratives and questions of the exhibition: how did Mondrian's migration to New York affect his art\; why did he revise and double-date artworks that he had 'finished' in Europe\; and what does it mean to make a painting\, in his words\, "more Boogie Woogie". This work has involved a number of creative challenges: Technical\, very specific research findings need to be moulded into engaging narratives that can be appreciated by a broad range of audiences\, satisfy different preferred learning modalities\, and navigate areas where knowledge is theoretical and incomplete clearly. In an age rife with digital misinformation\, it is especially important that museums speak to people effectively and confidently. This session will cover the creative and educational approaches we took to address these challenges and excavate for visitors another fascinating layer of Mondrian’s life and work. We’ll also speak to some of the considerations from the design and technology perspective. Using AI-assisted rapid prototyping to minimize development time\, creating reusable templates that are easy for content creators to deploy\, building in flexibility in the form of modes and overrides that allow the interactive to serve the bespoke needs of particular narratives or exhibitions. Though the Mondrian interactive is the star of this particular session\, we’ll also speak to our broader effort to develop our suite of digital interactives - publications\, chronologies\, 3d views\, geographic stories\, music\, conservation stories and more. We’re also looking into a system of lightweight experiences like trivia and treasure hunts made for special events. Our ultimate aim\, like many of our peer institutions\, is to be able to build a sustainable roster of digital interactives that can disseminate knowledge\, delight visitors\, and be adaptable enough to tell the many\, many stories that need to be told at our museum in a sustainable way.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:ff86a6fb3db211e95d27e069494df34a
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/ff86a6fb3db211e95d27e069494df34a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T010000Z
DTEND:20261023T030000Z
SUMMARY:Evening Reception
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:SPECIAL EVENT
LOCATION:Pacific Science Center\, 200 Sue Bird Court N.\, Seattle\, WA 98109
SEQUENCE:0
UID:6c9922bcd064bd9640b40c3170991248
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/6c9922bcd064bd9640b40c3170991248
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T153000Z
DTEND:20261023T223000Z
SUMMARY:Community Partner Showcase
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Level 5 Foyer\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:075f0d5cf4fcddef8888ab4db4f02adb
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/075f0d5cf4fcddef8888ab4db4f02adb
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T153000Z
DTEND:20261023T164500Z
SUMMARY:Continental Breakfast
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Quinault Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:267913857fdbc2c9b05f8cbc4ec8bc6f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/267913857fdbc2c9b05f8cbc4ec8bc6f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T153000Z
DTEND:20261023T193000Z
SUMMARY:Registration and Badge Pickup
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Gallery\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:08b0c7d013424cc2a650c5305116b8a6
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/08b0c7d013424cc2a650c5305116b8a6
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T154500Z
DTEND:20261023T163000Z
SUMMARY:SIG Breakfast + Birds of a Feather
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:48157367e99a8e8f0a328178088d83d4
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/48157367e99a8e8f0a328178088d83d4
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T164500Z
DTEND:20261023T170500Z
SUMMARY:How do you do\, fellow kids? Transforming the Smithsonian’s social media video strategy
DESCRIPTION:To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Unites States\, the central @Smithsonian social media team was tasked with creating 250 pieces of content with an emphasis on video. To meet this ambitious goal\, they have been building new workflows across internal communications teams to tell stories across 21 museums\, research centers\, and the National Zoo.   First\, the team expanded beyond social media. The central Office of Public Affairs formed a working group that includes members of the marketing\, press\, social media\, web\, and 250 communications teams. Presenters will cover how responsibilities have been divided (and conquered) and how the strategy has been rolled out to garner internal buy-in across the institution.   How do they tailor content to specific channels and platforms? In a multi-channel strategy where all channels matter\, how do they handle internal competition? Who participates in the planning and editing process? How do they measure success?  By diving into specific video series\, presenters will explore these questions and share lessons learned.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5f1b0edd33b9565c5da74ffd447a16c7
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/5f1b0edd33b9565c5da74ffd447a16c7
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T164500Z
DTEND:20261023T170500Z
SUMMARY:Rebuilding Search at The Met: From Infrastructure to Interface
DESCRIPTION:In recent years there has been much productive discussion both at MCN and within institutions on AI-generated visual descriptions for accessibility: how to generate descriptions\, how good they need to be\, and how institutions should oversee their use. Some museums have already successfully released AI-generated descriptions as accessibility text.  The Met has been treating AI-generated descriptions as something different: not (yet) as a final user-facing product\, but as raw search material. With descriptions of what artworks depict\, embedded into vector space and indexed alongside traditional metadata\, one can build a discovery experience that works not only for experts\, but also for the roughly two-thirds of users who arrive at our collection without a specific artwork in mind. Users searching for "year of the horse\," "mythical beasts\," or "eating food together" can find relevant works for the first time. Users searching in Chinese\, Spanish\, or any of dozens of languages can now find the same works as users searching in English. Users without art-historical vocabulary find what they are looking for without needing to know an artist's name or an artwork’s title. And yes\, the search still works for our experts and researchers who search via fields like accession number. We will share what we learned shipping this to a production system of The Met’s 550\,000 objects used by millions of visitors a year. We will cover the technical pipeline (vision-language models\, embeddings\, hybrid lexical-and-semantic search)\, the evaluation problem (with different concerns when descriptions are an input to search rather than user-facing text)\, the UX work (in many ways more difficult than the engineering)\, and what our post-launch analytics and user feedback have actually shown. We will be candid about what worked\, what surprised us\, what still fails\, and what we would do differently. We will also share what transfers to other institutions and what is specific to working at this scale.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:867b65d0b2ccae7dbec1bb703c935f3f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/867b65d0b2ccae7dbec1bb703c935f3f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T164500Z
DTEND:20261023T173000Z
SUMMARY:Designed to Draft\, Not Author: What Museum Partners Revealed About AI\, Accessibility\, and Trust
DESCRIPTION:Many museum digital projects have an accessibility gap. Images go without alt-text not because institutions don't care\, but because writing it at scale – across hundreds of objects\, for rotating content\, with limited staff – is genuinely hard. When Bloomberg Connects introduced AI-generated alt-text into its CMS\, the goal was to close that gap. What we learned was something different: that trust in an AI tool isn't primarily about what the AI can do. It's about what the human can still decide. This session tells that story from both sides of the table. In a structured 9-institution pilot\, we ran 450+ images through the tool and measured every interaction. Every metric outperformed its target. But the most striking result wasn't the acceptance rate or the time savings\; it was that 100% of pilot partners reported feeling in control of the final alt-text. That didn't happen by accident. It was the product of specific design choices: a clear visual separation between AI suggestion and human-editable field\, an explicit accept or reject step\, no auto-population. The design assumed that curatorial judgment was non-negotiable\, and partners felt it. The pilot also surfaced harder questions that design decisions alone couldn't resolve. When the AI consistently omits skin tone in portraits\, is that a safe default or an act of erasure? When it recognizes one religious figure and not another\, what does that reveal about whose cultural knowledge is encoded in the model? Partners didn't just want to know what the tool could do: 7 out of 9 asked us to document what it wouldn't do\, and why. That transparency mattered as much as the output. By the time of this session\, the tool will have been live across Bloomberg Connects' full partner network for 5 months. This panel draws on the controlled pilot findings and the real-world launch data together\, giving attendees both the structured experiment and the longitudinal test of whether what worked with 9 institutions holds at scale. The session is structured as a panel of co-presenters\, not a product demo. Each presenter brings a distinct perspective and a specific artifact – a real image\, a before-and-after alt-text\, a moment where they overrode the AI – to ground their contribution in practice. Attendees will leave with frameworks they can apply to their own AI adoption decisions\, not as a question of capability\, but as a question of institutional fit\, governance\, and what trust actually requires. Session structure: 10 min - Bloomberg Connects platform framing: the accessibility problem and the design hypothesis        10 min - Wolfsonian-FIU's experience what they expected\, what surprised them\, anchored in a specific example from their collection 10 min - Baltimore Museum of Art's experience: where the tool held up and where it raised harder questions\, anchored in a specific example from their collection 15 min - Group discussion & Q&A: building across all 3 perspectives on trust\, control\, and what they'd do differently
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:fd9d6b974a61da0098838471c55ad5ff
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/fd9d6b974a61da0098838471c55ad5ff
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T164500Z
DTEND:20261023T173000Z
SUMMARY:Speed Networking
DESCRIPTION:Meet other MCN attendees with some speed networking! A facilitator will guide attendees through a series of breakout conversations. Share with fellow attendees where you're from\, what you're curious about\, and more—just be quick!
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:bc202f683e92968d7313acd7ec1a872b
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/bc202f683e92968d7313acd7ec1a872b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T171000Z
DTEND:20261023T173000Z
SUMMARY:Museum Rizzler: More than just a trend
DESCRIPTION:This case study offers a closer look at this year’s wildly successful short-form Museum Rizzler video series\, created by the National Gallery of Art’s social media team. We’ll discuss the right way to lean into a trend\, balancing humor and art history\, and the logistics of delivering content in a nimble and responsive way. The presentation will also address practical considerations including cross-team collaboration\, approvals\, production timelines\, and risk assessment when participating in fast-moving online conversations. By sharing lessons learned\, performance insights\, and examples from the series\, this session offers a framework for museums seeking to participate authentically in internet culture while maintaining institutional values and audience trust.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:62dbfdb284b1c921f85f3d01d5a0dda0
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/62dbfdb284b1c921f85f3d01d5a0dda0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T171000Z
DTEND:20261023T173000Z
SUMMARY:Shared vector embeddings - tilting towards action
DESCRIPTION:The brutal reality in 2026 is that there is scant effort being made in the cultural heritage sector to engage with generative systems outside of being simple consumers. Maybe one of the big vendors will give us discounted rates for a limited time and we can achieve "great things". At the end of the day though few\, if any\, organizations will be in a position to control their own destiny. Nor will they  have done anything to change the power dynamic of surviving on the benevolence of someone else's handouts. We simply don't have the knowledge\, skills or means to deploy these systems and little to no collective work is happening right now to change that. SFO Museum has been developing a suite of open source tools designed to run on consumer-grade hardware (even old and crusty hardware) for producing\, storing\, querying and visualizing vector embeddings using as many different open-weight large language models as possible. Specifically we are using vector embeddings to implement image similarity features for collections imagery and other image-based artifacts related to museum programming\; to offer avenues of suggestion for investigating our various efforts derived from the properties "seen" by different ML models in the images of those works. This idea of using vector embeddings to "bridge" different aspects of museum programming – collections imagery\, photos posted to social media\, exhibition and installation photos - has led SFO Museum to publish our vector embeddings for anyone else to use and to encourage the broader cultural heritage sector to do the same. Cross-institutional collections search continues to be something of a “holy grail” in museums and other cultural heritage institutions. Vector-based image similarity\, while imperfect\, offers a meaningful first step to finally achieve it. It is a messy\, or at least fuzzy\, solution and tilts more towards the “discovery and surprise” end of the spectrum rather than informed academic research. While it may not be a tool for scholars and experts\, it can still provide meaningful avenues for non-experts to investigate and discover the relationship between different collections. This was still the stuff of fantasy a few years ago and now it is within our reach using nothing more than consumer-grade computer hardware. This presentation will demonstrate the work SFO Museum has done to date. It will discuss the theory practice and gotchas of the work to date and solicit feedback\, criticism and hopefully increased participation from the broader cultural heritage sector. The goal is to demonstrate that we have agency beyond a monthly-recurring fee to third-party vendors.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:f13987c185d73b893bd9871d7ac374db
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/f13987c185d73b893bd9871d7ac374db
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T173000Z
DTEND:20261023T174500Z
SUMMARY:Refreshment Break
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Level 5 Foyer\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:bbe04f88afce72607a335765d66bff2b
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/bbe04f88afce72607a335765d66bff2b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T174500Z
DTEND:20261023T180500Z
SUMMARY:Sketching with AI: 15 Prototypes in 15 minutes
DESCRIPTION:This session rapidly introduces 15 experimental visitor-facing GenAI prototypes we developed and tested at The Met over the course of six months. These sketches are the product of The Met’s inaugural “Technologist in Residence\,” a position focused on quickly and iteratively exploring emerging tech with our visitors. The goal of these past six months was to explore the potential for AI in the on-site experience: what’s working\, what’s not\, and what questions does this work raise—within the organization\, and with our visitors. Our goal is to move beyond theory and provide a practical library of examples that other museums can use to inform their own AI experiments\, and that show what is currently possible with GenAI. We’ll cover novel ideas\, tracking nascent visitor AI backlash\, small successes and outright failures. The prototypes cover a wide range of use-cases across the museum experience\, including physical navigation\, tools for close-looking single artworks\, collaborative games\, and experiments connecting art to the outside world. For each prototype we will share our most important findings\, including what visitors found useful\, what they ignored\, where the technology failed\, and where great ideas are butting up with current technical limitations. We will end our presentation by taking a step back and sharing our large-scale conclusions\, open questions\, and next steps towards a sustainable implementation of our findings.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:448d2045707ea2cbfd004e26585dd6d0
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/448d2045707ea2cbfd004e26585dd6d0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T174500Z
DTEND:20261023T183000Z
SUMMARY:Artists’ Tools\, Museum Stories: Creative Coding in the Age of AI
DESCRIPTION:As generative AI and emerging “vibe coding” workflows rapidly lower technical barriers\, museum professionals with varying levels of software development expertise can expand experimentation with visual methods of data inquiry using creative coding\, data visualization\, and interactive storytelling. This session explores how artist-centered technologies—particularly the long-running open-source creative coding platform Processing—can help museums uncover new insights\, reveal hidden relationships in collections data\, and prototype new forms of public engagement. Bringing together perspectives from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum\, New Mexico Highlands University\, and the Processing Foundation\, panelists will discuss how creative coding\, open-source tools\, and AI-assisted workflows can expand experimentation. Through practical examples and case studies\, the session will examine how museums can begin working with these tools\, evaluate appropriate technologies and AI models\, collaborate effectively with developers\, and thoughtfully transition from prototype to production. Panelists will also reflect on how these lowered barriers may expand participation in open-source creative technology communities\, enabling a wider range of museum professionals\, artists\, and educators to experiment\, contribute\, and shape emerging digital practices. The session will also highlight emerging support structures\, including mentorship and grant opportunities from the Processing Foundation\, that can help sustain creative coding initiatives over time. At a moment when trust in digital information systems is increasingly fractured\, creative coding offers museums new ways to make interpretation\, process\, and inquiry more visible. Panelists will explore how these approaches can support long-term relevance and trust by encouraging transparency\, experimentation\, and broader participation in shaping digital cultural experiences.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:aefc7b10e48d4b418c4b998126a2b8a2
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/aefc7b10e48d4b418c4b998126a2b8a2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T174500Z
DTEND:20261023T183000Z
SUMMARY:Design for the Visit! A Jobs to Be Done Approach to Making Your Website Work\, Work\, Work
DESCRIPTION:For the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia)\, the answer is clear: increase in-person visitation and help the museum reach its goal of one million annual visits. But like many institutions\, Mia’s website was not originally designed with that level of strategic specificity. It functioned as a broad information resource—useful\, but not intentionally structured to drive visits\, guide decisions\, or build ongoing relationships with audiences. In this session\, Mia and Forum One share how they are approaching the challenge of rethinking the website’s role as part of a broader\, cross-functional system. The work began with detailed end-to-end service blueprinting\, mapping visitor journeys across digital and physical touchpoints to understand how marketing\, content\, staff interactions\, and technology systems intersect to shape the experience. This process surfaced critical gaps: moments where interest is generated but not converted\, and where no single team owns the full journey. Building on this foundation\, the team is applying a Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) approach to focus on what visitors are actually trying to accomplish—such as planning a visit or discovering events. By defining these jobs\, the team can better understand the systems required to support them and identify targeted opportunities to reduce friction and improve outcomes. The session includes an interactive mapping activity where participants will map a visitor journey and the systems that support it\, making visible the cross-functional nature of their own organizations. From this shared view\, presenters will introduce a practical approach to identifying small\, testable improvements tied to specific moments in the journey. As institutions develop a clearer understanding of user pathways and patterns\, they unlock new opportunities to experiment with growth loops—designing experiences that encourage repeat visits\, sharing\, and deeper engagement over time. Rather than optimizing for one-time interactions\, this approach supports more intentional\, repeatable audience growth. Attendees will leave with a framework for approaching their own work: not as a one-time redesign effort\, but as an ongoing\, iterative process for improving systems that support real-world outcomes.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c3174f82bf413f7c09cd4068f9b50a07
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/c3174f82bf413f7c09cd4068f9b50a07
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T174500Z
DTEND:20261023T183000Z
SUMMARY:My Huntington: Integrating Trust\, Teams\, and Tech
DESCRIPTION:Following our previous sessions—One Collection to Rule Them All (MCN 2024) and Future-Proofing through Sustainability and Resilience (MCN 2025)—we return with the third chapter in our evolving story of digital transformation at The Huntington. Framed by this year’s themes of trust and longevity\, our session explores not just how an organization grows its technology infrastructure and digital capacity\, but also how enduring relationships make that growth possible. Centered on the recently launched My Huntington Portal\, we’ll share the realities behind the work: aligning multiple vendors around an ambitious technical roadmap to integrate our CMS with our ticketing/membership\, retail\, and CRM systems\; facing critical business decisions\; cultivating stakeholder buy-in\; and coordinating across diverse internal teams and priorities. We’ll examine how to ensure that what you build remains sustainable—not only for the organization\, but for the people responsible for maintaining and evolving it. In summer 2025\, The Huntington began efforts to create an industry-leading integrated customer portal that would simplify visitor and member account management and power a personalized website experience – including tailored calendar listings and other targeted content based on the unique aspects of the visitor’s customer profile. Our goals were for the portal to drive additional earned revenue through targeted marketing and upsell opportunities\, increase engagement and member satisfaction through a carefully designed user experience\, and maximize operational efficiency through reliable data workflows. This would be a critical strategic cornerstone to our “One Huntington” ethos and revamped brand message – we need to appear as a unified entity to the public and be gracious hosts online\, as we are in person\, to build and maintain brand loyalty and satisfaction.  In this session\, The Huntington\, Co-Curator\, and Cogapp will show how the project moved from strategy into implementation without losing alignment across teams\, systems\, and priorities. Co-Curator will share how the portal was built inside Shopify Customer Accounts\, using a reusable custom application layer shaped through this work and now being adapted for other cultural organizations. Cogapp will show how that member context extends into huntington.org through personalized calendar and content experiences\, tighter paths into ticketing\, and clearer upgrade opportunities. Rather than focusing only on the finished product\, we’ll unpack the architecture decisions\, handoffs\, and governance patterns that made the work sustainable—and increasingly repeatable—for cultural organizations with different systems\, teams\, and constraints. At the heart of our project\, and our success\, is trust: a client-vendor-collaborator partnership built over time and essential to making complex digital change possible.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:6602fea6dc751deed6c466e8bd014be3
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/6602fea6dc751deed6c466e8bd014be3
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T181000Z
DTEND:20261023T183000Z
SUMMARY:Trust\, Transparency\, and the Human-in-the-Loop: Scaling Museum Accessibility with Generative AI
DESCRIPTION:Building on a history of metadata innovation\, the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College has deepened its commitment to digital accessibility following the launch of a new internal and public-facing online collections database. This initiative centers on a strategic collaboration between the museum and the college’s Academic Technology Services (ATS). Utilizing an investigative workflow involving generative AI models\, undergraduate students—under the joint supervision of museum and technology staff—produced descriptive narrations for art and material culture objects. In their roles as coders\, editors\, reviewers\, researchers\, and narrators\, undergraduate students refined AI-generated outputs\, simultaneously developing critical AI literacy. Their application of "Responsible AI" was guided by a human-centered ethic\, requiring rigorous fact-checking\, vigilance against algorithmic bias\, and the calibration of descriptive style to align with established accessibility guidelines. The preliminary results from this student cohort underscore the necessity of "Human-in-the-Loop" strategies. Furthermore\, the project demonstrates that expert museum intervention remains essential to ensuring factual accuracy and maintaining social and cultural sensitivity. This work-in-progress establishes a model for peer institutions where trust in museum metadata and the transparency of automation tools are integrated directly into the professional workflow. Beyond digital discovery and broadened access\, these detailed descriptions serve as a vital institutional archive for inventory purposes and as a resilient analog resource. By providing printed or QR-coded visual descriptions\, the museum ensures that objects on display remain accessible to low-vision visitors\, bridging the gap between digital innovation and physical gallery experiences.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c4fe389343f0dd04ba17328e750999cc
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/c4fe389343f0dd04ba17328e750999cc
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T184500Z
DTEND:20261023T190500Z
SUMMARY:Designing Trustworthy Generative Search Experiences for Museums
DESCRIPTION:As museums and cultural institutions explore AI-driven discovery tools\, a critical question emerges: how do we design generative experiences that enhance discovery while sustaining institutional trust over time? This session shares early exploratory work from the National Gallery of Art rethinking search through the lens of Generative UI (GenUI)\, an emerging interaction model where interfaces dynamically adapt\, synthesize information\, and guide users through more personalized discovery journeys rather than relying solely on static keyword-based search results. Drawing from ongoing cross-collection search initiatives and AI-assisted prototyping work at the National Gallery of Art\, this session will explore how generative search experiences may help visitors navigate complex cultural content\, begin searching without knowing exact terminology\, and engage with collections through more intuitive and exploratory pathways. At the same time\, these systems introduce important questions around transparency\, interpretive authority\, bias\, user expectations\, and the long-term stewardship of institutional knowledge. Through a short case study and examples of generative search concepts and prototypes\, the session will examine how UX design and human-centered research can help museums experiment responsibly with emerging AI technologies while maintaining clarity\, credibility\, and public trust. Rather than presenting a finalized solution\, this talk offers a framework for how cultural institutions can thoughtfully evaluate and prototype AI-mediated discovery experiences during a period of rapid technological change.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:42a2758b405d6801cdb07feeb3e68719
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/42a2758b405d6801cdb07feeb3e68719
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T184500Z
DTEND:20261023T193000Z
SUMMARY:Accessibility at Scale: Two Case Studies in Using AI to Write and Publish Visual Descriptions
DESCRIPTION:Visiting an art museum often heavily relies on visual perception. For patrons who are blind or low vision\, this dependence significantly impedes their experience. By conveying an artwork’s composition and content through a descriptive textual representation\, museums can help close this gap. However\, most museum collections are too vast to manually develop descriptions for each object\, inspiring the question\, “how can AI help streamline the writing process?” Over the past two years\, a collaborative\, inter-museum working group of US-based art museums has been exploring using generative AI to provide image descriptions and alt- text for artwork. This session will explore how two of these museums\, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) and the National Gallery of Art (NGA)\, implemented comprehensive workflows to make visual descriptions available online for every primary image in their collections. This session will dive into the technical\, practical\, ethical\, and conceptual challenges inherent in developing generative AI pipelines in production and sharing this content with the public. We will share key decision points and processes put in place to instill confidence both internally and externally in the generated descriptions and maintain that confidence as new images become available and are described moving forward. We will discuss in depth our respective approaches for developing infrastructure to develop\, test\, and integrate the descriptions with internal systems\, and the strong collaboration with teams across each museum throughout the process. Emphasizing the importance of thoughtfully and responsibly sharing these descriptions\, we will also talk through our final steps for publishing the descriptions for the public and continuing to gather feedback post-production. Finally\, each museum will share their next steps on image descriptions and their broader uses of AI that have developed out of this work\, including broader cross-collection discovery efforts and accessible in-gallery experiences.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5256610f572ece4183a4e37a63fd5d64
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/5256610f572ece4183a4e37a63fd5d64
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T184500Z
DTEND:20261023T193000Z
SUMMARY:Insight at the Museum: How Smithsonian's UX Lab Builds User Trust in Digital Products
DESCRIPTION:Museums are among the most trusted institutions in our world\, but do our digital interfaces earn or erode that trust? Long-lived digital products such as online collections\, educational resources\, and online exhibitions represent significant investments and access points for museums. Ensuring that these products are easy and enjoyable to use is central to maintaining public trust and institutional longevity. In other words\, trust is a UX issue. This session explores the origin\, structure\, and impact of the Smithsonian’s User Experience (UX) Lab\, a pan-institutional program designed to embed user research into everyday digital decision-making. Launched by the Office of Digital and Innovation as an internal service offering\, the UX Lab partners with museums\, libraries\, and research units to conduct usability studies that generate actionable findings and build a more user-centered culture across a complex organization.  The presentation will highlight several UX Lab studies\, including one focused on the National Museum of American History’s online collections catalog and related discovery experiences. Attendees will learn how key audiences such as researchers\, educators\, and history enthusiasts interact with museums online\, where their expectations break down\, and what that reveals about long-term risks and design opportunities for improving digital collections platforms. The session concludes with practical takeaways from across the 18 UX Lab studies conducted so far that any museum—regardless of size\, budget\, or technical maturity—can apply to improve digital experiences and support their mission for the long haul.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:426d0df223194919c9872604bd3d030f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/426d0df223194919c9872604bd3d030f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T184500Z
DTEND:20261023T193000Z
SUMMARY:Sponsor Session
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:6d47fc2bb7d438553c9f2f1890adefe9
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/6d47fc2bb7d438553c9f2f1890adefe9
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T191000Z
DTEND:20261023T193000Z
SUMMARY:Robots\, Fever Dreams\, and Escape Fantasies: Trusting AI with Our Art
DESCRIPTION:Robots\, fever dreams\, and artworks with escape fantasies: for more than ten years\, the Harvard Art Museums have been asking what really happens when we trust AI to look at our art. What began as a practical effort to improve search and discovery by augmenting curatorial descriptions with machine‑generated synthetic metadata has grown into a long‑term experiment in co‑creating knowledge with machines. Over that time\, we’ve processed more than 500\,000 images (depicting artworks\, archival material\, and exhibitions and galleries) and amassed over 120 million synthetic annotations to enrich our collections catalogue. Today\, new images entering our systems are automatically queued for processing by a “panel” of commercial services: Amazon Nova and Rekognition\, Clarifai\, Imagga\, Google Gemini and Vision\, Microsoft Cognitive Services\, OpenAI GPT\, Anthropic Claude\, Meta Llama\, Mistral\, Qwen\, and others. Together\, these models tag features\, write descriptions\, identify colors\, read text\, detect faces\, and more. Their outputs are compared\, combined\, and surfaced through our public API (hvrd.art/api) and AI website (ai.harvardartmuseums.org) alongside human‑written cataloguing. This processing is not a temporary experiment\, but part of how we work. It’s baked into our data pipeline and designed so that new models can be added over time\, recognizing that describing collections is a forever project. Opinions\, interpretations\, and experiences of art are always in flux\, for humans and machines alike. Along the way\, we’ve learned that the real questions are not just about accuracy. What happens when humans and machines look at art together? How much does “accuracy” matter for material that is inherently subjective? How can we embrace the inconsistencies\, hallucinations\, and disagreements between models (and between models and people) to broaden how collections are described and experienced? This solo session will share concrete examples from over a decade of practice\, including short collective looking exercises where attendees attempt to reconcile their own responses to artworks with those of AIs. We’ll explore how this work has changed our thinking about trust\, authorship\, and longevity in collections data\, and how we are designing systems where AI is a long‑lived\, transparent tool in the hands of people\, rather than a faceless\, monolithic black-box of implied authority.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:b96b60f4e514bcc3294fba124114a934
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/b96b60f4e514bcc3294fba124114a934
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T193000Z
DTEND:20261023T204500Z
SUMMARY:Lunch
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Quinault Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:19181d6f7de5d872acd2c918d38523b1
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/19181d6f7de5d872acd2c918d38523b1
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T204500Z
DTEND:20261023T210500Z
SUMMARY:Collections Out of Context: An Experiment in Inter-institutional Collaboration
DESCRIPTION:Over the course of more than a year\, a cross-functional team from the Getty including data engineers\, catalogers\, and frontend developers coordinated remotely with our counterparts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The remit was simple: How do we surface the ways our collections connect? Given that our collections are both modeled in linked open data\, specifically Linked Art\, given that our technical stacks are aligned\, and given that both institutions promote open collections often and publicly -- what could we actually do that practically demonstrates our shared commitment to open standards? After months of planning\, the collaboration culminated with an in-person\, hands-on prototyping session. The point was to explore\, focusing on what was lightweight\, likely ephemeral\, and leveraged existing resources and expertise.  The process ended up helping us shine a light on core institutional concerns: using shared data models in real-life\; authority\, branding\, and UX issues\; organizational differences across institutions\; and just how collections ought to live outside our own museum contexts. This talk touches on what we can learn (and unlearn) when we go beyond talking about data models and start building a working app from scratch alongside an unfamiliar team.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:30b3727ba4032f708009a079f298c1e5
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/30b3727ba4032f708009a079f298c1e5
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T204500Z
DTEND:20261023T210500Z
SUMMARY:From Literacy to Agency: A Framework for Museums in Public Engagement with AI
DESCRIPTION:Many museums are already doing AI engagement work\, including exhibits\, programs\, community conversations. But what's the full range of what's possible\, and how do you know where your institution fits? This session introduces a typology of 13 roles museums can play in AI public engagement\, organized across four domains: building AI awareness and knowledge\, facilitating public input into AI development\, strengthening AI-related infrastructure\, and exploring AI's social impact and meaning. Developed by the Association of Science and Technology Centers through a cross-sector workshop process\, the framework offers a shared language for a field that is moving fast and often in parallel. Come map where your work already lives\, and where you might want to go next.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5b90f06fe36776fbfd7ecc55f878cbde
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/5b90f06fe36776fbfd7ecc55f878cbde
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T204500Z
DTEND:20261023T213000Z
SUMMARY:Before the Last Witness: Digital Storytelling for History That Can No Longer Speak for Itself
DESCRIPTION:How does a cultural institution position itself as the definitive educational authority on a historical subject — not just today\, but for a new generation to come? The generation that lived through World War II and the Truman presidency — that fought in the Pacific\, rationed food on the home front\, listened to Truman's voice on the radio\, and cast ballots in 1948 — is nearly gone. Within a decade\, the living memory of these events will be gone. What remains will be collections\, documents\, oral histories\, photographs\, and the digital records and experiences institutions build right now to carry these critical histories forward. This session presents two history museums navigating that transition in real time: the National World War II Museum and the Truman Library Institute. Both are engaged in long-term digital strategy work explicitly designed to answer the same question from different angles: how do you build digital experiences that preserve the weight and truth of history for audiences who have no personal connection to it and who are growing up in an often-chaotic information environment? The answer both institutions are working toward is not nostalgia. It is education and storytelling. In both cases\, that ambition has produced concrete\, purpose-built digital foundations designed to meet the next generation where they are. At the Truman Library Institute\, that means a new web presence which intends to surpass the official federal (.gov) site in depth and usability\, also doubling down on credibility at a tenuous moment in history\, paired with a quote-based AI-driven chatbot\, a tool that allows students and general audiences to engage directly with Truman’s words\, decisions\, and legacy through a conversational interface grounded entirely in the historical record.  At the National World War II Museum\, that means a sustained investment in purpose-built digital architecture: an authoritative infrastructure designed to establish the Museum as the trusted anchor for WWII education and storytelling online. In an era when students are as likely to encounter AI-generated summaries or algorithmically surfaced partial histories as they are to find rigorous scholarship\, the Museum’s digital strategy is oriented toward a clear goal: becoming the place where diverse audiences can reliably find research-driven\, editorially vetted\, and perspectives-inclusive accounts of World War II’s full scope and complexity. Both institutions reflect the same underlying conviction: that the best response to a fractured information environment is not to retreat from digital engagement\, but to build better\, more trustworthy digital experiences and to plan for their longevity. The session will trace how each institution arrived at its approach through deep stakeholder engagement\, user research\, phased implementation\, and a sustained commitment to organizational alignment\, and then open the floor for discussion of what this work means for the broader museum field.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5fe70d0c1039dcd899c8d5a30db4b6f4
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/5fe70d0c1039dcd899c8d5a30db4b6f4
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T204500Z
DTEND:20261023T213000Z
SUMMARY:How Many Multidisciplinary Project Mangers Does It Take to Reimagine ArtLens?
DESCRIPTION:This session examines the reimagined ArtLens Gallery from the perspective of project management\, using the framework of how we divided our responsibilities for a complex and ambitious undertaking involving multiple partners and collaborators. We divided project management roles between the physical space\, the app\, and the emphasis on making the experiences more inclusive and accessible to counteract the inaccessibility inherent to an art museum for blind or low vision people\, while better supporting visitors with a wide range of sensory\, mobility\, and cognitive access needs. We’ll share how we managed:  - Accessible Exhibition Design: The physical design choices we implemented to make the gallery more accessible to blind or low vision visitors\, also enhancing the experience for all. - Developing a Tactile Interface: How we developed an interactive that uses a tactile reproduction of an artwork as a user interface. - ArtLens App Rebuild: How we rebuilt the ArtLens app to make it easier for visitors to explore\, learn\, and connect at the CMA\, under a tight\, inflexible timeline. Prioritized for accessibility and inclusivity for all users\, the new app is built with a unified codebase for both iOS and Android and is strategically integrated within the CMA’s digital ecosystem to leverage the existing app technologies and build on what already works. - Dissecting the Museum Map: Using this page as a case study\, we’ll examine key decisions\, challenges\, and outcomes\, to unpack the complexities of the project and highlight the lessons learned. - Managing App Integration with the Physical Space: Project management strategies used to align cross-functional teams around a shared docking approach that served as the technical bridge between the app and physical space and the foundation for accessibility affordances.  - Managing Scope\, Tradeoff\, and Delivery Impacts: How key decisions\, such as physical versus proximity docking\, were scoped\, evaluated\, and implemented within real-world constraints\, and how those choices impacted timelines\, user flows\, and accessibility outcomes.  - Balancing Vision with Reality: What we’d do differently with additional time or resources and how the project continues to evolve beyond launch. Unlike previous iterations\, the reimagined ArtLens prioritizes inclusive experiences that make art matter. Through an integrated approach that combines physical exhibition design and the mobile application\, the gallery offers consistent\, multi-sensory experiences that reduce barriers and support independent exploration.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:42780ecfdb29bdb24186222c308ab79a
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/42780ecfdb29bdb24186222c308ab79a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T211000Z
DTEND:20261023T213000Z
SUMMARY:Back on the RAILs: Rebuilding trust one track at a time
DESCRIPTION:What does it take to navigate last-minute resistance on the eve of a collections-wide portal launch after two years of planning and execution? How do you avoid the derailment of an already moving train? In mid-2025\, The Huntington launched a pan-collections portal that combines our three collecting divisions —the Library\, the Art Museum\, and the Botanical Gardens— into one cohesive discovery platform on our main website. The objective was straightforward and in-line with our 5-year strategic plan: create a simple\, navigable\, and accessible online space for casual users to explore all our collections without having to navigate three separate formal research sites. Although the launch of this discovery portal took nearly two years of planning and execution\, at the midnight hour\, we experienced a near mutiny from our curatorial teams who were unaware of and expressly displeased with the need to consolidate cataloging and metadata practices to a cross-divisional level. They felt like they were losing control over the collections they're responsible for\, and they didn’t like that.  This is a case study of how the discovery portal team had to quell anxieties and problem-solve our way into proceeding with an imminent launch\, despite objections. We will discuss the development and execution process\, where things went wrong\, and the steps we took to address these last-minute concerns and build trust among our internal users\, particularly our curators. We will also cover what sustainability looks like after implementation: governance\, clear decision rights\, documentation\, and a workable path to raise issues\, so problems aren’t solved ad hoc—or by the loudest voice.  Attendees will leave with a fresh perspective on how disagreements\, especially at the most critical moments\, are opportunities for positive change and encouragement in team building and trust-building.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:d334c179089441b4578b0cfb1c463363
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/d334c179089441b4578b0cfb1c463363
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T211000Z
DTEND:20261023T213000Z
SUMMARY:Museums and AI: Findings from a National Convening
DESCRIPTION:Museums are being asked to make decisions about AI and take on new roles and practices at a moment when both the technologies themselves and the social expectations surrounding them are evolving rapidly. This session shares the synopsis of the Museums and AI convening funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in spring 2026\, which brought together museum professionals\, technologists\, educators\, researchers\, and institutional leaders to reflect on the current state of AI in the museum field\, imagine possible futures\, and identify what support museums need in order to engage with AI responsibly and effectively. Drawing from facilitated discussions\, scenario-building exercises\, and thematic synthesis conducted after the convening\, this session presents what museum professionals currently see as the most promising and most likely trajectories for AI adoption in museums\, as well as concerns and ethical issues. Rather than framing AI as either an inevitable solution or an existential threat\, the session examines the nuanced perspectives that emerged across the convening. One theme that emerged was exploring AI use for internal workflow efficiency\, particularly where these tools could help address museums’ chronic capacity limitations\, in contrast to visitor-facing AI experiences\, with concerns about the trust the public has in Museums\, hallucinations and misinformation\, intellectual property\, transparency\, and the potential erosion of human interpretation and expertise. The convening also revealed significant concerns about uneven institutional capacity across the field. Leaders raised the issue that AI adoption could widen existing inequities between large\, well-resourced museums and smaller institutions lacking staffing\, technical expertise\, policy guidance\, or experimentation capacity.  Many other themes arose\, including AI policies\, ethical use\, improvements to accessibility\, environmental concerns\, use of Open Access and other content as AI training sets\, complexities in working with AI vendors\, AI literacy in the public and in museum staff\, rapidly changing legal implications\,  leadership skills necessary for meeting the moment\, and how funders can best understand and support museums in this moment.  Finally\, participants identified significant needs for shared field-wide support\, including ethical frameworks\, implementation guidance\, professional development\, peer-learning networks\, and stronger forms of AI literacy grounded in museum contexts and values. Rather than focusing on what AI is\, specific tools\, or individual implementations\, this session offers attendees a high-level synopsis of how museums across the field are currently thinking about AI\, unpacking these themes to document where major tensions and opportunities are emerging\, where there was consensus\, and when viewpoints differed\, and how institutions can approach AI adoption in ways that align with mission\, public trust\, equity\, and long-term institutional values.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:57d1d1be86bc42741cb470c9c75c2a8e
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/57d1d1be86bc42741cb470c9c75c2a8e
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T213000Z
DTEND:20261023T214500Z
SUMMARY:Refreshment Break
DESCRIPTION:\n
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Level 5 Foyer\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:8dcc3a5b4101fa12593da2c82fc75c06
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/8dcc3a5b4101fa12593da2c82fc75c06
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T214500Z
DTEND:20261023T220500Z
SUMMARY:Modernizing Digital Exhibits: Legacy Codebases and Shifting Technology Landscapes
DESCRIPTION:How do you modernize critical exhibit systems without disrupting the visitor experience? This session explores how the 9/11 Memorial & Museum is upgrading the backend infrastructure that powers its digital exhibits. From replacing outdated technologies to introducing containerized systems and real-time monitoring\, this work ensures reliability at scale while supporting millions of visitors each year. Learn how to approach modernization in a live museum environment\, make the case for change\, and implement upgrades that improve both operational stability and long-term sustainability. When the 9/11 Memorial & Museum opened in 2014\, its digital exhibit systems were built using technologies that were appropriate at the time but have since become outdated. Over the years\, these systems have remained central to the visitor experience\, supporting some of the most meaningful and interactive elements of the Museum. However\, maintaining reliability and performance at scale has become increasingly challenging. This session focuses on how we are modernizing the backend infrastructure that powers three core interactive exhibits: the Memorial Exhibition interactive\, the Signing Steel Kiosks and Projected Map\, and the Last Column interactive. These experiences allow visitors to engage deeply with the stories of victims\, leave personal reflections\, and explore artifacts connected to first responders and recovery workers. The goal of this modernization effort is not just to replace outdated technologies\, but to ensure long-term stability\, scalability\, and ease of management. I will walk through how we evaluated the existing systems\, identified risks associated with legacy components\, and prioritized upgrades while keeping the exhibits fully operational. A key part of this work involves moving to a containerized architecture using tools such as Docker Compose. This shift allows us to standardize deployments\, improve system reliability\, and reduce the complexity of maintaining multiple applications. In parallel\, we are modernizing our content management capabilities\, making them accessible so exhibit staff can more easily manage and update digital content without heavy technical dependency. Another important focus is observability. By integrating modern monitoring and logging tools\, we now have real-time visibility into system performance and usage patterns. This not only helps us proactively address issues but also provides valuable insights into how visitors interact with these exhibits. Throughout the session\, I will also discuss the practical side of this work—how to build a case for modernization within a museum setting\, how to balance risk and continuity\, and how to execute technical upgrades in a live\, high-traffic environment.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:67e45a77903911a1b0ddd4e25778b8ec
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/67e45a77903911a1b0ddd4e25778b8ec
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T214500Z
DTEND:20261023T223000Z
SUMMARY:AI-Powered Access to Collections and the Future of Audience Trust
DESCRIPTION:Description coming soon
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:512 Willapa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:283dabd80744fc6b922eaee091569b68
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/283dabd80744fc6b922eaee091569b68
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T214500Z
DTEND:20261023T223000Z
SUMMARY:Building Trust That Lasts: 10 Years of Design
DESCRIPTION:More than a decade ago\, Research Quest was recognized at NMC as a “Best of Show” prototype—an ambitious digital learning experience designed to connect students with real museum collections and scientific data. Ten years later\, it has been developed into 15 distinct learning modules in use today by hundreds of educators and thousands of learners across the United States. What does it take for a digital experience not just to launch successfully\, but to endure—and continue to earn trust over time? This session offers a longitudinal case study of Research Quest’s evolution\, examining the design decisions\, trade-offs\, and core commitments that allowed the platform to adapt across shifting technologies\, audiences\, and expectations without losing its integrity. As digital ecosystems accelerate and trust in information sources becomes increasingly fragile\, designing for longevity requires more than innovation—it demands clarity about what should remain constant. Drawing on close collaboration between the fields of design and the learning sciences\, we will explore how foundational principles—such as centering authentic contexts\, supporting inquiry-based engagement\, and making scientific processes visible—have shaped both user experience and long-term credibility of the content. We will share examples of how scaffolding was refined over time to better support learners exercise data agency as they interprete complex data\, understand uncertainty\, and engage in evidence-based reasoning – supporting how to think not what to think. Participants will examine what changed (platforms\, interfaces\, distribution models) and what did not (commitments to authenticity\, learner agency\, and scientific integrity)\, and consider how these decisions contributed to sustained use and trust. The session will also surface tensions between innovation and stability\, and the realities of maintaining and evolving a digital product within institutional constraints. As museums and cultural organizations navigate rapidly changing technological landscapes—including AI-generated content and shifting expectations around authority—this session offers a grounded perspective on designing systems that endure. Participants will leave with practical frameworks for building digital experiences that can evolve over time while maintaining credibility\, relevance\, and trust.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:502 Cowlitz\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:1e6d39e966d57f53542ccdc91b65dca7
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/1e6d39e966d57f53542ccdc91b65dca7
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T214500Z
DTEND:20261023T223000Z
SUMMARY:Cultivating Awe with Art Online
DESCRIPTION:Jaws drop. Eyes widen. Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast or profound that leads you to see the world in a different way. Regularly experiencing and reflecting on moments of awe can have long-term benefits for our minds\, bodies\, and social connections. It opens us up to new ways of thinking\, shifts perspectives\, and increases empathy. And art is the perfect place to start.&nbsp\;\n \n The National Gallery of Art’s learning and engagement and visitor experience teams together with Dr. Dacher Keltner and the Social Interaction Lab at the University of California\, Berkeley\, have researched how people can cultivate awe through art. But how do we foster that experience online? The museum’s awe and digital content teams have experimented with developing interactive articles that encourage curiosity\, wonder\, emotional connection\, and a deeper engagement with visual art. In this session\, we’ll introduce you to the principles of awe\, share insights from the National Gallery’s research\, and explore how to adapt these findings into content choices—from pacing and tone to visuals and multimedia materials. You’ll leave with tools to help your online visitors pause\, look closely\, reflect\, and find more awe in their lives.
CATEGORIES:45-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:0f504a2f0e73e8c87783ed640eeb0716
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/0f504a2f0e73e8c87783ed640eeb0716
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T221000Z
DTEND:20261023T223000Z
SUMMARY:Multimodal by Design: Exhibit Software Architecture at the Obama Presidential Center
DESCRIPTION:The best exhibit technology disappears. A visitor reaches for a screen\, a button\, and a story unfolds. That invisibility requires\, in practice\, a set of architectural decisions that many museum platforms never make — decisions that determine not just who can experience an exhibit today\, but whether the system holding it together will still hold up after exhibits rotate\, content changes\, audience needs shift\, staff turns over\, and the vendors you launched with are no longer the vendors you have. At the Obama Presidential Center\, we treated accessibility and longevity as architecture problems. The result is a centralized exhibit platform powering the OPC's digital experiences. It spans cloud-based content authoring\, a MongoDB-backed exhibit API\, on-premises Docker services\, and a fleet of devices — touchscreen kiosks and dedicated accessibility UXP devices — all drawing from the same content and event model. Every device\, whatever its form\, is a client of the same system. The visitor at the touchscreen and the visitor at the UXP station are not having parallel experiences maintained by separate codebases. They are having the same experience\, delivered differently. Accessibility decisions in museums are often mistaken for content decisions — alt text\, audio descriptions\, alternative formats. These matter\, but they are downstream of something more fundamental: whether the system itself was designed to serve more than one kind of visitor. This didn't emerge from the architecture. It is the architecture. Building the suite of services taught us that the decisions with the deepest impact on accessibility and longevity are rarely the visible ones — and that getting them right early is what makes everything else possible. The unglamorous choices about how content is shared\, how devices communicate\, and how much the running exhibit depends on live infrastructure turned out to be the choices that had the most impact. This session is a case study in those decisions — how we made them\, what they cost\, what they produced\, and what we would do differently. The OPC had dedicated engineering resources that many institutions cannot count on. We don't want to paper over that. But the principles that guided us are not proprietary\, and the questions they answer — who can access this\, and will it last — are ones every institution is already living with\, whatever their stack. I hope to leave attendees with a clearer sense of what trustworthy exhibit infrastructure can look like\, and a vocabulary for advocating for it in their own contexts.
CATEGORIES:15-MINUTE PRESENTATION
LOCATION:501 Chiwawa\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:d80f47909b45eda8aa1c5500fa75c42d
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/d80f47909b45eda8aa1c5500fa75c42d
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260802T111602Z
DTSTART:20261023T224500Z
DTEND:20261023T233000Z
SUMMARY:Closing Remarks
DESCRIPTION:
CATEGORIES:EVENT
LOCATION:Elwah Ballroom\, Seattle\, WA\, USA
SEQUENCE:0
UID:fb0623a3a58199cb4c53a2e42938225f
URL:http://mcn2026.sched.com/event/fb0623a3a58199cb4c53a2e42938225f
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR