Meet Collections Management

Since joining the CMA in 2022, director of collections management Alyssa Morasco has been busy shaping the collections management program. With more than 17 years of experience and a deep commitment to preserving cultural heritage, Morasco uses innovative approaches and best practices to ensure that our collection remains well-preserved and available for future generations to enjoy and study.

What expertise do you bring to the CMA?

I am originally from western New York and received my bachelor's degree in art history from SUNY Fredonia. My career began in the early 2000s as an art handler at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, New York, where I was introduced to 
behind-the-scenes career paths within the museum field I previously hadn’t known existed.
I then moved to California, where I spent eight years at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in collections management, starting as a technician for archival rehousing and maintenance. I eventually became head of the department, overseeing a significant collection relocation project moving 100,000 artworks to off-site storage and growing the team from three to 40 members within five years. 
Following LACMA, I became the director of collections management at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, established by George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson. My role included building the department structure, onboarding staff, and creating policies and procedures for registration, collections management, rights and reproductions, collection photography, insurance coverage, storage planning, exhibition planning, and more.
I was also involved in the museum building construction, advising on the functionality of storage space, art paths, and installation strategies. In addition to overseeing the fine art collection, I managed the Lucasfilm Archives at Skywalker Ranch, an eye-opening experience working directly with film props and costumes that have their own stories and cultural significance. Working at Lucas showed me what it takes to build a museum from the ground up, not just opening the physical building but also developing a culture and workforce.

What type of work is performed by your team? 

The department consists of 21 staff members who play a crucial role in the care, safety, organization, accessibility, management, and transport of the CMA’s collection.  Our team includes registrars, a collections manager, grant-funded collections care staff, a packing specialist, art handlers, and the photographic and digital imaging team, as well as yearly interns.  We facilitate art movement throughout the museum, not just for exhibitions but also when artwork needs to travel from storage to conservation, for example, or to the photo studio for imaging. It’s not uncommon for our art handlers to log more than 25,000 steps per day during an exhibition installation! Our team of registrars manages logistics for all artwork in our care, including shipments around the globe, legal contracts, and fine art insurance. And we all support efforts to make the collection available not only physically in our galleries but digitally online.

What roles have the Nord Network interns played in your department? 

We were fortunate to be included in the inaugural Nord Network internship program this past year, which for our team focused on providing opportunities to applicants with nontraditional pathways into the museum world, particularly important to me with my background. We hosted two interns who worked directly with our collections manager and our art handling team. Their projects included supporting the installation of Korean Couture, permanent collection gallery rotations, and storage rehousing projects. The Nord internship is a recurring program that greatly benefits our department and the interns’ professional development, and we welcome our next Nord intern this spring.

How do grants benefit the work your team does?

A recent Museums for America grant through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) provides funding for 18 months. The focus is a comprehensive collections care initiative to inventory, rehouse, consolidate, and further organize our works-on-paper holdings to support the long-term preservation of the collection in storage. Collections management oversees an item-level inventory, where each artwork is physically assessed for condition and rehousing needs, and all tombstone information in our database is reviewed against the physical artwork. 
About 95% of the collection is in storage at any given time, and it requires constant effort to maintain. Routine inventories are a big part of the health of a collection, and this grant provides funding for three staff positions to help with this work. 
We’re excited to share future updates about this grant, but to highlight the full-circle success of our Nord Network interns, I am happy to note that we have hired interns for two of the three new IMLS grant–funded positions.