Chelsey O’Brien

Chelsey O’Brien is a Curator at ACMI and was a part of the curatorial team that developed the permanent exhibition The Story of the Moving Image. She has been working in museums, galleries, and with contemporary artists for 13 years both in Australia and the US across on a variety of large-scale exhibitions and artist-led projects.

Chelsey is an inquisitive, practical and hands-on, visitor-focussed curator with a keen interest in working in multidisciplinary contexts that encourage collaboration and critical dialogue around contemporary culture.

MuseumNext Digital Collections Summit
Wednesday, 6 October 2021

Preserving the Present: contemporary media in the museum

Keywords: responsive display, collecting contemporary media, ethical collecting, preserving the trace

ACMI’s centrepiece exhibition, The Story of the Moving Image, investigates the potential for media to influence people, shape opinion and censor information, and for the moving image to be a tool of empowerment and social change.

Our ‘Catch of the Day’ responsive display presents a range of curated stories, current media and memes, capturing the zeitgeist of contemporary culture by exhibiting what’s currently viral on the internet. Such curation, inevitably raises a range of ethical questions around display, copyright, collecting, representation and authorship. This presentation will speak to these issues and illuminate the on-going protocols and conversations had at ACMI to ensure a responsive Museum display and archive.

Find the full schedule here