Into the Vault: Building Collections Management Skills
Images: Natalie Scola and Rachel Deiterding work with students in previous Into the Vault workshops.
Session 1: January 20, February 3, and February 24, 6:00pm-9:00pm
Session 2: January 27, February 10, and March 3, 6:00pm-9:00pm
All workshops will occur on campus. Locations TBA.
Curious about working in a museum? Come build knowledge, skills, and confidence to take into your career.
This FREE three-part workshop series encourages students to expand their knowledge about museum collections through interactive hands-on experience with collection objects. Building on the workshop series held in September 2025, this series presents three new workshops that provide hands-on learning and skill development using the McIntosh Gallery Collection. No past collection experience required!
Topics include:
- Processing New Acquisitions and Conducting Intake Interviews
- Introduction to Gallery Storage and Storage Mounts
- Agents of Deterioration and Preventive Conservation
Space is limited. Registration is required.
General registration opens on Tuesday, November 24 at 8:00 am.
Advanced registration is available for students in the Department of Visual Arts, the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, the School for Advanced Studies in Arts and Humanities, and Public History. Advanced registration opens on Tuesday, November 17 at 8:00am. Email rdeiterd@uwo.ca for more information about advanced registration.
Participants are encouraged to register for all three workshops. The workshops are designed to be experienced in series.
Western University students who attend all three workshops in this series and complete the workshop assignment are eligible to receive credit on their Western Co-Curricular Record. WCCR allows you to showcase your experiences and share your professional skills with future employers.
Workshop Descriptions:
Processing New Acquisitions and Conducting Intake Interviews:
What happens when a museum or gallery accepts a new acquisition? How do we plan for the continued care of an object from the outset?
In this workshop, students will learn about the documentation that occurs when an artwork enters a museum collection. This includes: legal paperwork, condition reports, intake interviews, and object file creation. Activities will focus on how to conduct intake interviews, a critical but often overlooked information-gathering practice. Students will work with under-documented objects from the McIntosh Gallery collection and practice constructing an effective intake interview outline.
Introduction to Gallery Storage and Storage Mounts:
Museum and Gallery Storage differs significantly from institution to institution. This workshop will include a rare virtual tour of the McIntosh Gallery Collection Vault. As a group, we will review common storage guidelines for different artistic media and introduce key considerations for gallery storage, including temperature and humidity controls, water risks, pest risks, and security guidelines. Students will learn how to read and interpret environmental condition graphs used across galleries, archives, libraries and museums, and we will construct custom storage mounts for small artworks from the McIntosh Gallery collection.
Introduction to Preventive Conservation:
Preventive conservation, the practice of providing care to support objects and slow down deterioration in museum collections, can be a daunting topic for students to learn. Artwork collections in particular contain a dizzying array of materials that artists combine in unusual ways which makes caring for them challenging. This workshop provides an introductory examination of the principles behind preventive conservation using artwork from McIntosh Gallery’s collection. Participants will learn how to use the Canadian Conservation Institute’s Agents of Deterioration as a framework to guide preventive conservation decision-making. Activities will use objects from the collection to apply the framework and guide participants on how to care for challenging artworks in their future careers.
About the Facilitators:
Rachel Deiterding is the Curator of Collections and Special Projects at McIntosh Gallery, Western University, where she is conducting a comprehensive collection audit and review. This work will produce an updated Collection Policy and a Collection Development Plan, setting the direction for McIntosh Gallery’s future collecting strategy and collections management priorities. She holds a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Museum Studies from Western University. She has worked with collections in her past roles at the MacLaren Art Centre, the Doris McCarthy Gallery, and the Art Gallery of York University. Her curatorial work is currently focused on revealing institutional collecting practices and developing sustainable collecting strategies for public institutions that support collection growth.
Natalie Scola is a PhD Candidate in Art History and Visual Culture at Western University researching the aesthetic development of 19th-century seed catalogues and the intersection of horticulture, botanical art, and environmentalism. She holds a Masters of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto. At Western University, Natalie has curated exhibitions across multiple subjects, including local artists (Painted by My Hand: Works from the Collection of Phillip Aziz, Satellite Gallery, 2023; Christopher Wallis: In the Balance of Light, artLAB Gallery, 2025), highlights from archival collections (Cultivating the Past: Soil Legacies and Our Future Climate, Cohen Commons, 2026), and botanical art (The More Elegant and Graceful Plant: Botanical Artworks from London and Beyond, artLAB Gallery, 2025). In 2024 and 2025, Natalie taught a course on Canadian Art History at Fanshawe College. In the fall of 2026, Natalie taught a seminar course at Western University focused on plants, colonialism and collecting. Natalie has worked in various museums and archives, focusing on public education and interpretation. She currently works at Dundurn Castle National Historic Site (Hamilton, Ontario) in the historic Kitchen Garden, where she researches 19th-century gardening practices and how to connect historic horticultural practices to the modern day.
Hillary Anderson is a PhD Candidate in the Library and Information Science program within the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University. Her dissertation research focuses on how disability is expressed in academic library cataloguing practices. She also examines issues of AI literacy, GLAM information practices, and critical disability studies. She holds an MLIS from Western University, a Diploma in Collections and Conservation Management from Fleming College (Peterborough), and a BD in Fashion Design from Toronto Metropolitan University. Prior to entering graduate school, she was a museum conservator specializing in preventive and textile conservation. She held a textile conservation internship at Historic Royal Palaces in the UK and spent most of her career as the Conservator at the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto. As an instructor, she pairs experiential learning with academic theory and incorporates accessibility into her teaching practice.
