Collection Moves: Success through Flexibility & Realistic Expectations

Preparing an entire historic house collection for a major rehabilitation project requires careful planning, coordination, and plenty of flexibility when plans inevitably change. Drawing on the Minnesota Historical Society’s Ramsey House project, Todd Topper will walk through the process of inventorying, packing, documenting, and relocating approximately 18,000 objects and artworks. This presentation shares the workflows, partnerships, challenges, and lessons learned along the way.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Identify key planning considerations for packing and moving collections during a building rehabilitation or restoration project.
• Develop practical workflows for inventory, documentation, packing, staging, and object movement.
• Recognize common logistical challenges when coordinating collections staff, contractors, movers, and other project partners.
• Apply lessons learned about flexibility, communication, and realistic expectations when adapting a collections move plan in real time.

Speaker: 

Todd Topper, Senior Collections Manager, Minnesota Historical Society

Todd Topper is the Senior Manager for Collections at the Minnesota Historical Society. Since 1995, much of his work has focused on museum collections management, registration, and project management. The work has taken Todd from his hometown museum in Evansville Indiana to Atlanta Georgia, Denver Colorado, Columbus Ohio and now St. Paul Minnesota.  Within collections management, Todd specializes in storage systems, vault design, and large collection relocations. He orchestrated major collections relocations for History Colorado in 2012 and the Ohio History Connection in 2024. He also helped design new storage systems for both. When not thinking about museum storage solutions, he enjoys sailing, nautical literature, and painting.