Registrar’s Committee Mountain Plains Museums Association (RC-MPMA) Report
MPMA Mid-Winter Meeting, February 2012, Corpus Christi, Texas
Submitted by Sofía Galarza Liu
Executive Board News
The RC-MPMA will soon be seeking nominations for Vice-Chair. Matt Renick is serving as ViceChair pro tem until the 2012 election.
Membership
At the end of 2011 we had 45 members. Twenty members have renewed so far this year. This
year we tried something new and offered an early bird membership rate for members who
joined or renewed by February 4th. Six new members took advantage of this offer. While
membership renewals and membership solicitations are now managed electronically via email,
we are still discussing implementing on-line membership renewals in the future.
Newsletter
Heather Thorwald published a beautiful pre-conference newsletter for us last summer. We
have switched to a twice-a-year format (a pre-conference or late summer issue and a postconference or winter issue).
Helping Hands
Matt Renick has volunteered to serve as Helping Hands Coordinator in addition to his duties as
Vice-Chair pro tem. Matt and I will work together to identify the location for the RC-MPMA’s
2012 Helping Hands event. The Montana Helping Hands events went very well. Volunteers
worked at two locations, the Mai Wah Museum in Butte and the Montana Historical Society
Museum in Helena.
Scholarships
This year we are offering two scholarships to attend the MPMA annual conference. Terry Dowd
has again generously agreed to sponsor a $750 travel scholarship for a mid-level professional
and the RC-MPMA is offering a $500 travel scholarship (up from the $475 travel scholarship we
offered last year). We have streamlined the application process and hope that this will attract
more applicants. The scholarship application guidelines have been sent to our members and are
posted on the RC-MPMA website http://www.mpma.net/rc_mpma/scholarships.html
Website
The RC-MPMA website is on-line. We are looking forward to posting our newsletters and other
resources on this site. Thank you MPMA for all your work to make this happen.
RC-AAM
Sofía Galarza Liu will be representing the RC-MPMA at the upcoming national meeting of the
Registrar’s Committee American Association of Museums (RC-AAM) in Minneapolis in April.
Current RC-MPMA Executive Board
Sofía Galarza Liu, Chair
Collection Manager
Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas
1301 Mississippi St
Lawrence, KS 66045
reina@ku.edu
Matt Renick, Vice-Chair pro-tem and Scholarship Chair
Registrar
Museum of Texas Tech University
3301 4th St
Lubbock, Texas 79409
matt.renick@ttu.edu
Terri Carnes, Secretary
Collections Manager of Anthropology
Museum of Texas Tech University, MS 3191
Basement, Room J6
Lubbock, Texas 79409
terri.l.carnes@ttu.edu
Melissa DeBie, Treasurer
Assistant Registrar
Colorado Historical Society
1300 Broadway
Denver, CO 80203
Melissa.DeBie@chs.state.co.us
Anne Holman, Membership Chair
Registrar/Collections Manager
Fort Caspar Museum
4001 Fort Caspar Rd
Casper, WY 82604
aholman@cityofcasperwy.com
Heather Thorwald, Publications Chair (Newsletter)
Registrar
Denver Museum of Nature and Science
2001 Colorado Blvd
Denver, CO 80205
Heather.Thorwald@dmns.org
Nominations Chair, vacant