Jill Deupi
Beaux Arts Director and Chief Curator, Lowe Art Museum
University of Miami
Chuck Eckman
Dean of Libraries and University Librarian
University of Miami
The University of Miami hosted the inaugural “The Academic Art Museum and Library Summit” in January 2016. This event brought together 14 pairs of library and museum directors from a representative cross-section of North American colleges and universities. Working together, these teams spent two days immersed in interactive, participatory programming designed to inspire expansive thinking and facilitate the mining of rich collaborative opportunities among this academic subset of the broader sector of institutions described as Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAMs). Invitees submitted proposed topics for discussion, as well as at least one idea for a collaborative project on their home campuses, in advance of the Summit. The former helped to shape the convening’s three plenary sessions, while the latter ensured that each pair of attendees had engaged in meaningful dialogue regarding the challenges of and possibilities for deep collaboration well in advance of the Summit. This project brief will provide a high-level review of the Summit’s findings as documented in a recently published white paper. The latter focused on the potential for developing shared library-museum approaches to collection development, exhibition, curricular engagement, discovery, digitization, and preservation.