2016 IAMFA Annual Conference - October 2-5

Cultural Institutions in Boston, USA and the surrounding region are hosts for the 26th IAMFA Conference beginning October 2nd, 2016. As plans for the Educational and Guest Programs are finalized, we will share information for members and guests on this web site and our Facebook page.  Here’s to seeing old friends again and making new ones.  We hope to see you in Boston!

Our host of the 2016 IAMFA Annual Conference is James Moisson, who is Senior Facilities Manager at Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jim can be reached at [email protected]

Hilton Boston Back Bay

This year's home base for the Conference will be the Hilton Boston Back Bay located in the historic Back Bay section of downtown Boston, steps from the Convention Center, Fenway Park, Newbury Street and Prudential Center shops.  The hotel's downtown proximity keeps you close to all the excitement Boston has to offer. Guests can walk to some of Boston’s popular attractions like fashionable Newbury Street, offering stylish boutiques and restaurants, and the elegant Copley Place Mall. Immerse yourself in culture at the Museum of Fine Arts, just a short walk away.  

We have negotiated a block of rooms for the conference. Please use the link to the right to reserve your room by the cutoff date of September 8th. 

The Hilton Boston Back Bay will be the venue for the Annual Benchmarking and Learning Workshop to be held on Sunday, October 2, 2016.  This workshop is free to participants of the 2016 IAMFA Annual Benchmarking Exercise, but others wishing to attend may register for this workshop as a "Non Benchmarking Participant".  There is a link on the Payment Page for a fee.  You can learn more about the Annual Benchmarking Exercise on the Benchmarking Page. 

The Opening Reception will be held on Sunday Evening at Fogo de Chao Brazilian Steakhouse.  The founders of Fogo de Chão grew up on a traditional Southern Brazilian farm in the Serra Gaucha. It is here that they learned to cook in the churrasco grilling tradition that would become the backbone of their story. 

Peabody Essex Museum

Monday will include a full-day of programming at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. PEM is considered one of the oldest continuously operating museums in the United States. It is a successor to the East India Marine Society, established in 1799.  It combines the collections of the former Peabody Museum of Salem (which acquired the Society's collection) and the Essex Institute. The museum holds one of the major collections of Asian art in the US. Its total holdings include about 1.3 million pieces, as well as twenty-two historic buildings.  The Peabody Essex ranks among the top 20 art museums in the U.S. by measures including gallery space and endowment. Once the Advancement Campaign is complete and the newly expanded museum opens in 2019, PEM will rank in the top 10 North American art museums in terms of gallery square footage, operating budget and endowment. The P.E.M has more than 840,000 works of art and culture featuring maritime art and history; American art; Asian, Oceanic, and African art; Asian export art; two large libraries with over 400,000 books, and manuscripts.

Dinner on Monday Evening will be at The House of the Seven Gables, Salem Massachusetts' premiere historic site located right on the harbor.  Built in 1668, this is the oldest surviving 17th century wooden mansion in New England. A New England Lobster Buffet will be provided by Vinwood Catering.  

Harvard Art Museums

Tuesday will be a day of programming at Harvard Art Museums including a Benchmarking discussion, and the IAMFA Annual General Meeting.  In 2008, the Harvard Art Museums' historic building at 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, closed for a major renovation and expansion project. A new renovated building at 32 Quincy Street unites the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler museums in a single state-of-the-art facility designed by architect Renzo Piano, which increases gallery space by 40% and adds a glass, pyramidal roof. The renovation adds six levels of galleries, classrooms, lecture halls, and new study areas providing access to parts of the 250,000-piece collection of the museums. The new building was opened in November 2014. We plan to share stories of the major projects we have completed since many of you were here for the 2004 conference, addressing issues technical, aesthetic and programmatic.  We also are developing plans to visit Harvard’s Widener Library. We expect the colors of the leaves will be vivid during the time frame of theconference, but you may see some other vivid colors at Harvard Art Museums.  Click here

Wednesday will include a day of programming split between the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, with lunch at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was incorporated in 1900 and opened in 1903 by Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), an American art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. It is housed in a building designed to emulate a 15th-century Venetian palace, drawing particular inspiration from the Venetian Palazzo Barbaro.

The museum houses an art collection of world importance, including significant examples of European, Asian, and American art, from paintings and sculpture to tapestries and decorative arts. In 1990, thirteen of the museum's works were stolen; the high-profile crime remains unsolved and the artwork's location is still unknown.

Today, the museum hosts exhibitions of historic and contemporary art, as well as concerts, lectures, family and community programs, and changing courtyard displays. In accordance with the will of Isabella Stewart Gardner, admittance is discounted to those wearing Boston Red Sox memorabilia, and is free to anyone named Isabella.

Museum of Fine Arts

The Museum of Fine Arts (or MFA) is one of the largest museums in the United States. It contains more than 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas. With more than one million visitors a year, it is the 55th most-visited art museum in the world as of 2014.

Founded in 1870, the museum moved to its current location in 1909. The museum is affiliated with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and its sister museum, the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in Nagoya, Japan.

In the mid-2000s, the museum launched a major effort to renovate and expand its facilities.  The renovation included a new Art of the Americas Wing opening on November 20, 2010, to feature artwork from North, South, and Central America.

In 2015, the museum renovated its Japanese garden, Tenshin-en. The garden's kabukimon-style entrance gate was built by Chris Hall of Massachusetts, using traditional Japanese carpentry techniques.

Calderwood Courtyard, Harvard Art Museums

This year's closing gala dinner (black tie optional)  will be held at the Calderwood Courtyard at Harvard Art Musems.  This iconic space is modeled after the façade of the canon’s house of the 15th-century church of San Biagio, in Montepulciano, Italy. The dramatic new glass rooftop enables controlled natural light to illuminate the upper levels of the facility and filter into the courtyard below. The courtyard also offers guests interior views throughout the museums to the galleries, the Art Study Center, and the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies.

Those who wish to register for the Thursday extra day of tours will visit Naumkeag near West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the Clark Art Institute, with lunch at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge and dinner at Lucia's Tavola in Ayer, Massachusetts. This extra day will be a long day of touring and traveling through the colorful countryside of New England, departing the hotel at 8:00 AM and returning at 9:30 PM.

Naumkeag

A National Historic Landmark District, Naumkeag is now owned by The Trustees of Reservations, who operate it as a nonprofit museum. 

Naumkeag was designed by noted architect Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White in 1885 as the summer estate for Joseph Hodges Choate, a prominent New York City attorney and American ambassador to England from 1899 to 1905, and then his daughter Mabel. It contains the Choate family's furniture, Chinese porcelain, and artwork collected from America, Europe, and the Far East.

The house sits within 8 acres (3.2 ha) of terraced gardens (including The Rose Garden, The Afternoon Garden, and The Chinese Garden) and landscaped grounds surrounded by 40 acres (16 ha) of woodland, meadow, and pasture. Its grounds were first designed in the late 1880s by Nathan Barrett, then replanned and expanded between 1926 and 1956 by the noted landscape designer Fletcher Steele. 

Clark Art Institute

The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute, referred to as "The Clark", is an art museum with a large collection located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA. In June 2008, the Clark expanded its campus with the addition of the Stone Hill Center, a 32,000-square-foot (3,000 m2) building designed by Tadao Ando on a nearby wooded hillside that contains exhibition space and a conservation studio. In 2014, the Clark Center, also designed by Ando, opened with more than 11,000 square feet of gallery space for special exhibitions; a multipurpose pavilion for conferences, lectures, and events; new dining, retail, and family spaces; and an all-glass Museum Pavilion that creates a new entrance to the original Museum Building.  The Clark has a dual role of serving as a museum and a research institute; it is home to the Research and Academic Program, which offers semester-long fellowships to scholars and hosts many public lectures throughout the year. It is also the seat of the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.

Boston and New England have a lot to offer.  Try these links for ideas and to help you plan!

Best of Boston knows their stuff, and covers far more than Boston proper.

Chronicle is a local TV show which is a great resource for things to do.

Visit New England covers all six states, which are generally small and accessible by car.

Feel free to contact conference chair Jim Moisson at [email protected].  He and others can help too.