SUNDRE — The local museum’s new executive director brings beaming enthusiasm with her as well as plans to update and modernize the virtual collection.
“The digital, virtual collection software that we are using is no longer being updated by the owner,” explains Hailey Lightbown, who started on Wednesday, Oct. 20.
“I would like to swap our virtual collections to a different software that is still being updated,” said Lightbown, who is originally from Lacombe but is currently residing in Olds with family.
As society becomes increasingly dependent on computers in the 21st century, many museums have started using digital databases to streamline and substantially facilitate the effort to keep track of a physical collection, she said.
“So, instead of using huge binders that have the accession numbers, the certificate of gift — all that essential information for donations and the collections themselves — it is on a computer,” she said, adding that makes searching for items a simple matter of typing in an accession number of a description of an item.
“And it’ll bring it up just like Google, basically.”
Lightbown completed a four-year program at the University of Lethbridge and graduated in October of 2020 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts under art history and museum studies.
“It was a terrible time to graduate,” she said, referring to the challenges imposed by the pandemic.
“I had to move back home with my parents, and sort of just get any job that I could and keep watching the job boards for whatever would show up in my field.”
Applying for as many positions as possible, Lightbown was able to build some experience at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery for a couple of months as a part-time programmer. She also worked as a summer student for a couple of seasons at the Michener House Museum in Lacombe, where she was in charge of volunteers, collections, as well as accessioning and de-accessioning.
Accessioning is the process involved in obtaining physical and legal custody of a group of records or other materials and documenting it.
“I have a background in museums and collections, so I’ve done a lot of accessioning and de-accessioning of artifacts,” said Lightbown.
When the Lacombe museum’s executive director was head-hunted by the Archives of Canada during her time there, Lightbown said she and the remaining summer students suddenly found themselves assuming a greater level of responsibility than they had ever anticipated.
“It was a bit of shock getting thrown right into it,” she said.
But the experience proved invaluable. And during her time in university, she also interned at the Galt Museum in Lethbridge providing programming assistance.
She in large part attributes her mother’s help in eventually successfully applying for the job in Sundre.
“My mom is very helpful, and she was also looking at job postings for me,” she said. “She found the Sundre museum posting — it had actually expired the day before.”
But her mom urged her to submit her resume regardless, just in case a suitable candidate still hadn’t been found.
“I sent it in and a day or two later, I got an email asking if I could come in for an interview,” she said.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Although in her budding career, she has already built up a sizeable repertoire of experience, this is her first job as executive director.
“I am super excited to be given this opportunity. It’s definitely felt like I’ve been thrown in the deep end because I’ve never been the boss, so to speak,” she said with a chuckle.
But she relishes the chance to enhance the local museum and looks forward to working on establishing a more aesthetically consistent presentation of collections, citing as an example existing information sheets that have a mix of handwritten and printed descriptions with the artifacts.
“One of my goals is to just make that more uniform and more up to regular museum standards where it’s printed on acid-free paper so that it doesn’t affect the artefacts themselves,” she said.
Asked what she most enjoys about working in a museum, Lightbown recalled an early childhood story that predates her own memories but that her mom once told her.
Although Lightbown doesn’t recollect the specific details herself, she said her mother once mentioned how as a student in the first grade visiting an aunt in a Calgary hospital who in 2005 was in labour with twins, she pointed to a painting on the wall and confidently declared, “That’s a Monet!”
“My mom was just shocked that one, I knew who Monet was, and two, that I was able to recognize that it was a Monet print,” she said.
That innate passion for art carried throughout her years in school.
“I found the only thing that I was really good at in school, or found interest in, was art,” she said, adding the curriculum does not offer much with regards to the arts save for either an optional or weekly class.
“I just really enjoyed art in school, and I took it every chance I got.”
Describing her teachers as fantastic people who nurtured her love of the arts and encouraged her to pursue a related path, Lightbown said she eventually came to the realization during her senior high school years that being an artist is unfortunately not associated with getting a well-paying job. But she was nevertheless committed to finding a gainful career that involved the arts in some form or fashion.
“So, I decided to go into art history and museums,” she said.
Anyone who might be interested in better getting to know her is reminded the museum’s winter hours are now in effect, and can drop by Thursdays to Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., as well as Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. She’s also in on Mondays to, among other duties, answer phone calls.
