Member
Rob Lancefield (retired) was Head of IT at the Yale Center for British Art. Before that, he led digital work at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University (Connecticut, US), where he initiated and led the policy development and technical implementation of DAC Open Access Images in 2012. His interests include digital collections strategy, content sharing for aggregated access, digitization project design, helping people lead their museums to offer open content, and nonprofit governance.
A former president of the Museum Computer Network (MCN), Rob served three terms as chair of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Council of Affiliates, a council of leadership representatives from 28 national organizations in the museum field, and is a co-founder of the ImageMuse discussion group, which has grown to connect more than 500 digital imaging professionals in cultural heritage institutions.
Rob has spoken on museum collection systems, image delivery infrastructure, open content, collection digitization, getting projects done, repatriating sound from archives to heritage communities, and other topics at MCN, Museums & the Web, and other conferences. His PhD dissertation examined how experiences of the musical voice and body lent false credence to beliefs about racial difference, and he curated the traveling exhibition "Performing Images, Embodying Race" on related visual culture. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation (Oxford University Press, 2019). Rob also produced the 2011 reissue of 1980s recordings by Talking Drums (http://talkingdrums.us), an ensemble of Ghanaian and American musicians including himself, for re-release by the American Composers Forum on innova Recordings.