Presentation by Seb Chan, Director & CEO of ACMI (formerly Australian Centre for the Moving Image) and Museum Studies Program 2024 Visiting Scholar

UM Museum of Art – Helmut Stern Auditorium

Predictably, the first quarter of the 21st century has seen museums significantly transformed by media technology and networked society, yet often this has been viewed as institutions reacting to, rather than leading change. Institutions are now deeply enmeshed in complex technological systems, platforms, and services across all parts of a museum’s operations and practices. Today, the nature of collections themselves is implicated as they are increasingly ‘born digital.’ These shifts all require highly skilled labor, new strategies, policies, and debate to ensure that the transformations serve the museum’s community and long-term interests.

This talk will explore trust, attention, digital memory, ephemerality, and the fragility of new cultural artefacts, and conversely, maintenance, longevity, and the need for bold pan-institutional and sector-wide initiatives, new skills, and literacies.

Seb Chan is the Director & CEO of ACMI, guiding ACMI as a museum focused on screen culture and the intersection of media, technology, worldbuilding and storytelling. Prior to his appointment to this role, Seb was ACMI’s and the museum field’s first Chief Experience Officer (2015-22), and was a key part of the team behind ACMI’s expansion into a multi-award winning, multiplatform museum.

Prior his time with ACMI, Seb led the digital transformation of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York from its award-winning interactive Pen with Local Projects, to the acquisition of important software-based works for the Smithsonian’s collection (2011–15). Beginning his museum career in Sydney he led the Powerhouse Museum’s pioneering work in open access, mass collaboration and digital experience during the 2000s in Sydney. His work has won awards internationally in the museum, media and design spheres. Before becoming known in the museum world, Seb had a successful life in electronic and experimental music as a performer, publisher and producer.

Seb is the current National President of the Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMaGA), serves on the international advisory board member of Art Science Museum (Singapore) and is a Board member of the non-profit Tessitura Network (US). He previously served on the boards of the National Communication Museum, Diversity Arts Australia, ICE Parramatta, and Music NSW; and has been an advisor to the National Museum of Australia, National Heritage Board of Singapore, Mellon Foundation’s Artstor, and was a member of the Australian Government’s Gov2.0 Taskforce.

Seb is Adjunct Professor, School of Media and Communication, in the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT. He has been Partner Investigator on Australian Research Council Linkage projects that have contributed to new museum practices in communicating climate change, digital preservation, interactive design, and audience research, and has extended his contribution to these themes through papers, book chapters and presentations to over 100 museum, media and design conferences and symposia across the globe.

He is an alumnus of the Getty Leadership Institute, Salzburg Global Seminar, UNSW, and was awarded the UNSW Alumni Award for Art & Culture in 2024.