Our Past Year Highlights

So much changed for SEMC between March 2020 and December 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic including the way we operate, the way we provide programming and connection, and the way we communicate with our membership, as well as transitions in SEMC leadership, staff, and Council members. What has NOT changed is our organizational mission and vision:

SEMC Mission

The Southeastern Museums Conference is a networking organization that serves to foster professionalism, mutual support, and communication. A non-profit membership association, SEMC strives to increase educational and professional development opportunities and improve the interchange of ideas, information, and cooperation.

SEMC Vision

The vision of SEMC is to be essential to its members and the broader museum community.

During this past year, SEMC staff worked hard to keep the SEMC mission and vision primary as we continue to make necessary adjustments, engage the membership through updated methods of digital communication, and produce quality professional development opportunities and programs in ways that meet the moment and acknowledge the ongoing challenges and successes museums are experiencing across our region.

The Southeastern Museums Conference continued to navigate organizational and operational adjustments in 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccines provided the world with essential protection against the ever-changing virus, and SEMC remained nimble in its approach to member engagement, professional programming, networking (both virtual and in-person), and communication methods that spanned many digital platforms. 2022 was another transformational year for the Southeastern Museums Conference. The pace was fast and the ongoing uncertainties of a post-pandemic world continued to necessitate new ways of operating, communicating, and gathering. We persevered.

The following pages contain reflection on all SEMC accomplished as a professional organization in 2022. The staff, leadership, members, member museums, and industry partners have been strong, creative, and agile, and continue to show resilience, empathy, and determination to enact necessary changes to keep the field relevant, connected, and supportive of the communities museums serve.

Programs

At the outset of 2022, despite the troubling spread of the COVID-19 Omicron variant, vaccines continued to provide hope for a return to in-person gatherings later in the year. While we looked forward, pandemic adjustments from 2020/2021 continued to inspire SEMC staff and leadership to provide professional development opportunities throughout the year in the form of virtual programs and gatherings. Staying connected and engaged during the early days of pandemic isolation was important, and SEMC resolved to continue monthly virtual programs (now part of our operational model) to bring the southeast museum community together and offer professional learning opportunities from the comfort and safety of home or office. Year-round virtual programs further encourage the peer-to-peer learning and camaraderie that is a hallmark of SEMC.

While accessible online training opportunities have become essential to SEMC’s mission, producing quality virtual offerings involves considerable time and expense essential to program production and costs related to technology, accessibility, marketing, and virtual event management services. Operating support from SEMC industry partners was critical to the continued success and smooth execution of virtual programming.

In 2022 SEMC produced 10 virtual programs in collaboration with museum professionals from across the region that to date have almost 500 views of the recordings.

SEMC created The Launchpad series in partnership with the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries which included a resume matching/review component and two virtual programs (Landing the Job and Taking Off) geared toward career development for emerging museum professionals and advancement in the museum field. SEMC/ AAMG will continue this collaboration in 2023 for additional programming and opportunities.

Our teams designed and produced a 2022 Annual Meeting that provided:

• Sixty professional sessions held at the Rogers Convention Center in Northwest Arkansas. In addition, the 2022 Keynote Address by Quantia Mills Fletcher, Director of The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in Little Rock Arkansas, and the SEMC Awards Roundtable were live streamed on

Facebook. Recordings are posted on the SEMC YouTube Channel and website.

• The 2022 Annual Meeting offered a preconference listening session, The Other Slavery: A Series of Conversations Addressing the History of Indigenous Slavery in the US. This session, organized and hosted by the pan-Smithsonian initiative Our Shared Future: Reckoning Within Our Racial Past, highlighted ongoing work of the National Museum of American Indian (NMAI) in collaboration with the Smithsonian Latino Center (SLC) and the National Museum of the African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The Other Slavery examined this topic from the perspective of addressing regional historical practices of enslaving Indigenous people –from the Southwest to the West to the Southeast and North. Twenty-five attendees participated in this session.

• While COVID protocols were lessened this year, several larger session rooms provided space for social distancing, a spacious Expo Hall with wide aisles felt full but never crowded, and colored bracelets were once again offered for attendees to indicate their comfort level with social interaction.

• The PheedLoop platform was accessible to all SEMC2022 attendees to gather, post, network, and find the most up-to-date information on session locations, presenters, and times. PheedLoop email blasts noted any schedule changes and communicated announcements about transportation, food offerings, and the 2022 Expo Hall. Additionally, the new PheedLoop Go! app provided attendees access to up-to-date conference information from their phones.

• Forty-four companies that provide services to museums were represented in the 2022 Expo Hall in addition to tables highlighting the SEMC2022 publication contest winners, the Arkansas Museums Association, Visit Rogers,

Arkansas Tourism, Student Work in Museums poster projects, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

• Attendees enjoyed evening events at Northwest Arkansas museums and sites including the Daisy Airgun Museum, Arkansas Public Theatre, Rogers Historical Museum, the Amazeum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. Additionally, sites including the Museum of Native American History, Hunt Family Ozark Nature Center, Pea Ridge National Military Park, Tyson Foods Art Collection, and the Walmart Museum welcomed SEMC attendees for special excursions both pre- and post-conference. There were also walking tours of downtown Rogers and Compton Gardens, offsite workshops on accessibility and interpretation and an opportunity for a volunteer group to participate in a Hands-on-Help collections project at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History.

• The SEMC Equity and Inclusion Action Team met at the Convention Center and created a comprehensive webpage for SEMC2022 attendees seeking diverse experiences and histories in Northwest Arkansas.

• SEMC emerging museum professionals and mid-careers gathered to network and plan in Rogers. Attendees Facebooked, Tweeted, and took photographs to memorialize the year. SEMC now hosts a crowd-sourced FLICKR page of Annual Meeting images which we will continue to add to. Michael Lachowski from the Georgia Museum of Art also volunteered his time as the official SEMC2022 photographer and created an album of SEMC2022 memories accessible to all.

• For the first time, SEMC offered an opportunity for all Annual Meeting attendees to have professional headshots taken as part of their conference registration from local photographer, Brandon Watts. 110 attendees took advantage of this service.

• Sessions were divided into tracks including Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Education, Collections, Curatorial, Fundraising/ Development, Leadership/Administration, Technology, Exhibits, Emerging Museum Professionals, and Career Development.

• The 2022 Annual Meeting featured 225 + speakers representing all types and sizes of museums, facets of the field, and career levels.

• The SEMC Council came together to consider community partnerships with a panel of Northwest Arkansas organizational leaders facilitated by Inclusion Specialist, Monica Kumar.

• SEMC2022 saw the introduction of a dynamic roundtable discussion with 2022 Leadership Award recipients as well as Table Talk, a memorable evening session with direct conversation between a diverse group of participants that was important, necessary, and hopeful in terms of how our attendees interact as a SEMC community.

• Attendees filled out an evaluation form for each session via a QR code linked to a Google Doc, thereby allowing SEMC2022 to be an almost paperless event. A post-conference evaluation was sent to all attendees to inform future sessions and 2023 Annual Meeting planning.

• SEMC awarded 10 Travel Scholarships to cover the costs of registration and travel expenses to the Annual Meeting and offered fourteen reduced-rate registrations to those who volunteered at least three hours during the conference.

• The SEMC2022 Annual Meeting had a total of 446 registrants.

SEMC Leadership Institute

• In 2022 SEMC successfully launched the Leadership Institute in-person at the Duke Mansion in Charlotte, NC April 24-29, 2022.

• This program was developed in partnership with the Association of African American Museums with support from the National Museum of African American History CultureOffice of Strategic Partnerships.

• The 2022 Institute hosted a cohort of sixteen individuals at the mid-career level.

• The Leadership Institute will run again in April 2024.

Jekyll Island Management Institute (JIMI)

• In late spring 2022, in collaboration with Council leadership, SEMC staff advertised an open call for 2023 JIMI instructors. Using a transparent rubric system, a JIMI Instructor Selection Committee narrowed the large pool of applicants to seventeen instructors and a facilitator.

• Incorporating feedback from the 2021 JIMI Evaluation, the program curriculum was updated to incorporate concepts of diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion as well as current technologies into each session; SEMC staff rebuilt the webpage, created a PheedLoop site, updated the program schedule, and reestablished relationships with partners on Jekyll Island.

• Collaborating with Council leadership, in early fall 2022, SEMC staff opened the call for applications for the 2023 Jekyll Island Management Institute. Using a transparent rubric system, a JIMI Selection Committee narrowed a pool of forty applicants to a diverse cohort of sixteen individuals interested in filling knowledge gaps in museum management.

• SEMC was able to provide four tuition scholarships from the Peter S. LaPaglia Fund to support 2023 Jekyll Island Management Institute attendees.

• The 2023 JIMI program has generous support from the Jekyll Island Authority, National Museum of African American History and Culture-Office of Strategic Partnerships, Smithsonian Our Shared Future: Reckoning with our Racial past, and individual donors.

• Several state museum associations, including the Arkansas Museum Association, Mississippi Museum Association, and the North Carolina Museums Council, offered scholarships to attendees from those states to assist with tuition and travel fees.

• JIMI2023 ran January 17–24, 2023, and utilized the PheedLoop platform for sharing Institute materials and schedules. The Jekyll Island Authority donated session space for JIMI2023.

2022 saw the completion of production of over 35 virtual programs (between April 2021 and January 2022) focused on technology for small museums. Titled the Museum Learning Hub/Digital Empowerment Program for Small Museums, this was a collaborative project between the six regional museum associations. Four SEMC members/museums were featured in this national programming.

In 2022 SEMC staff facilitated hybrid (due to the ongoing pandemic) Council and Program Committee mid-year meetings. At the mid-year meeting in Northwest Arkansas, the Council participated in a half-day session with Inclusion Specialist, Monica Kumar, to discuss diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion as related to the SEMC and Council leadership.

Many SEMC members (and SEMC staff) participated in 2022 Museum Advocacy Day with representation from most southeastern states.

In 2022 SEMC continued to offer monthly virtual happy hours for members to drop in, relax and laugh with friends (old and new) from across the region.

Fundraising

SEMC was the recipient of generous funding from the following partners to support programming (Virtual, JIMI, Leadership Institute, Annual Meeting) and general operations:

• Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation

• National Museum of African American History and Culture – Office of Strategic Partnerships

• Smithsonian Our Shared Future, Reckoning with our Racial Past

• Association of African American Museums

Twenty-seven organizations and industry partners provided over $50,000 in support for the 2022 Annual Meeting.

SEMC was the recipient of a $20,000 gift to create the Handumy Jean Tahan Internship Fund to offer financial assistance to small museums (beginning in 2023) to support paid internships.

In 2022 SEMC was the recipient of monetary gifts (ranging from $25 to $1,000) toward various programs, endowments, and operations from 25+ individuals generating almost $6,000 in individual support.

SEMC Staff and Leadership

This year, under the guidance of the SEMC Council, a SEMC Program Administrator position was created using similar positions and a comparative salary study to ensure this position was compensated fairly. Heather Nowak was selected as the SEMC Program Administrator (a remote position) and joined the staff on August 1, 2022.

In 2022 SEMC offered two paid internship opportunities (sponsored by SEMC industry partners) to engage a student from Spelman College in the inner workings of running a professional organization. Paid internship opportunities will continue in 2023 with students from Spelman College and Georgia College.

Throughout the year SEMC staff engaged more than twenty-five volunteers across the region in projects from creating virtual programming to assisting with registration preparation and on-site work at the 2022 Annual Meeting.

At the end of 2022 SEMC transitioned to new officers and added three new Council members with a wealth of experience that will continue to strengthen and diversify SEMC leadership.

The entire SEMC Council, participated in the second SEMC Council Demographic SelfStudy. The data captured in this internal selfstudy assisted the Nomination Committee in the ongoing development of a Council that reflects diverse viewpoints, backgrounds, skills, experiences, and expertise. By completing this survey, Council members affirmed commitment to equity, transparency, and creating a representative leadership base.

Communications

In 2022, SEMC staff produced a 2021 Annual Report, three editions (Winter/Spring, Summer, and Fall) of Inside SEMC, a monthly E-Newsletter, targeted emails to the membership, monthly acknowledgments of member birthdays and multiple special E-News communications to launch and promote various programs. In addition, SEMC staff maintain consistent social media postings and engagement across all platforms.

Working with both Goosepen Studio and Press and Banks Creative, we continued to enhance SEMC’s branding with professionally designed marketing materials and branded graphics to ensure that SEMC offerings are easily recognizable.

This year we highlighted the terrific work of 17 emerging and mid-career museum professionals in the SEMC Ones to Watch program.

Upcoming for 2023

As we move away from the pandemic, the coming years will continue to bring new challenges to SEMC with regard to capacity, revenue generation, diversification, and sustainability. Through purposeful strategic planning and member engagement, SEMC will navigate the challenges and remain nimble and ready to meet the moment and assist the southeast museum community in finding opportunities for positive change and forward movement. It is essential for museums to continue to adapt to the current realities and think ahead to building a fundamentally different future. As recent years have taught us, change can come quickly and powerfully. SEMC will be a resource as members continue to evolve, build a different, more equitable future for the field, and recognize this unique period in our shared history as a time that calls us to bring our best.

After several years of virtual and hybrid meetings and a cautious foray back to annual gatherings, in 2023 (November 13-15) the SEMC membership will convene at The Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky for a robust, in-person 2023 Annual Meeting. While it may take a few years to realize 600-800 attendees again at an Annual Meeting, SEMC2022 conference evaluations were overall positive about the return to in-person gatherings.

At the 2023 Annual Meeting, we will once again offer all SEMC members live stream access to the 2023 Keynote Address and Award Recipient Roundtable as well as an opening plenary session featuring Louisville artists, musicians and other cultural leaders engaged in activism. The plenary will engage panelists in a moderated discussion related to the 2023 conference theme, Truth Builds Community. Purposefully developed by the Louisville local arrangements team, the theme addresses the social unrest that Louisville experienced in recent years and how local institutions have taken an active role in creating programs and exhibits that lift up underserved and underrepresented peoples, and create space for community engagement for healing and open dialogue. We are excited for attendees to continue to engage in direct dialogue, networking, and professional growth and development next fall in Louisville.

In 2023, SEMC will continue to provide year-round virtual offerings for members. Online sessions will remain free for SEMC members with the help of industry partner sponsorships and support.

In addition to the relaunch of the Jekyll Island Management Institute, other exciting projects for 2023 include a strategic planning preparation session for the SEMC Council with Robert Bull of the Compass Group at the March 2023 Mid-Year Meeting and the call for applications for the 2024 Leadership Institute. This summer, SEMC will also open applications for the Handumy Jean Tahan Internship Fund.

Onward

SEMC has gained considerable experience in planning for and navigating the adjustments needed to manage events, professional networking, learning and engagement during times of disruption. We are looking forward to a productive, strategic, engaged year. Generous funding from many SEMC partners including Smithsonian Reckoning With our Racial Past program, National Museum of African American History and Culture – Office of Strategic Partnerships, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation and the Association of African American Museums helped SEMC through a transitional 2022, providing critical support for SEMC programs and events, helping to move the organization toward a sustainable future. SEMC is grateful for these partnerships and will continue to work hard to strategize and enact action steps that will benefit all SEMC members and support the mission and vision by strengthening museums and museum professionals in the southeast to build a more equitable future through education and creative collaborations that connect organizations to diverse communities and spark positive, inclusive change.

Respectfully,

Zinnia Willits SEMC Executive Director