BNG Operations Officer Attends 2026 PACCIN Conference

Bermuda National Gallery’s Volunteer Coordinator & Operations Officer Lara Hetzel recently received the Bermuda Arts Council’s Education and Experience Grant to support her attendance at the 2026 PACCIN Preparators Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, held in May 2026.

PACCIN (Preparation, Art handling, and Collections Care Information Network) is a nonprofit dedicated to sharing practical information and essential resources to help hands-on collections care professionals to better protect and preserve the cultural property in their care, elevating standards for art and artifact handling and housing. Some areas of focus include packing, crating, shipping, installation, mount-making, rigging, exhibition fabrication, lighting design and storage methodology.

The 3-day 2026 Preparators Conference was hosted by Stockholm’s Nationalmusem and Moderna Museet, and attended by over 280 museum, archive and gallery professionals from 16 countries, representing both the institutional and commercial sector. These included preparators, packers, mount-makers, conservators, registrars, exhibition designers and technicians of all sorts – as well as one Operations Officer from Bermuda!

We sat down with Lara to discuss her experience.

BNG: Can you describe the conference schedule?

LH: The first day of the conference was held at the historic Nationalmuseum, one of Europe’s oldest art museums, responsible for Sweden’s largest collection of fine art and design. The day featured a commercial trade fair, poster presentations, and small group sessions at the Nationalmuseum, as well as guided tour opportunities at the nearby Moderna Museet, Vasa Museum and Vrak Museum of Wrecks.

The highlight for me was nabbing the final spot on a back-of-house tour at the Moderna, with the opportunity to go behind the scenes to visit their conservation labs, and photography, carpentry and packing studios. We had the chance to see their public Study Gallery in action, where movable screens descend from the ceiling upon request, each showcasing a curated selection from their permanent collection. It was also special to experience the Nationalmuseum while it was closed to the public, including a scissor lift ride to view Carl Larsson’s colossal painting Midvinterblot, installed in the upper staircase, up close.

Day 2 and 3 were held at the Moderna Museet, the state museum for modern and contemporary art and design, with a packed schedule of conference presentations by professionals across the collections care field, interspersed with breaks for mingling and provisions – including a Swedish afternoon ‘fika’, and the opportunity on Day 2 to stay and view the museum’s impressive current exhibitions during their extended evening hours. House of Nisaba: New Stories of Painting, was a standout, with its immersive exhibition environment constructed from corrugated cardboard. Notably, the Moderna also has an installation work by Carsten Höller comprised of two spiral slides from the museum’s rooftop to ground level, which conference attendees made sure to fully experience.

BNG: What were the presentation topics?

LH: Presentation topics were widely varied, but universally fascinating, covering the logistics of large-scale installation projects (a 40-foot Jeff Koons piece at LACMA; an open-storage armory at the Worcester Art Museum); working with artworks executed in challenging mediums (adobe; dirt and grass; self-destructive kinetic sculptures; ephemeral materials); major collections moves; creative housing and mounting solutions for transportation and storage; principles of gallery lighting design; and much more. For those interested, a full list of 2026 presentations is available online, and PACCIN will also be uploading recorded videos from this year’s conference.

One of the great things about PACCIN is that they are committed to open resource sharing, and have all of the presentations from 2022 and 2024’s conferences also archived on their website and freely available. I’ve referenced these recordings in the past, so it was fantastic to be there in person this year, to be able to ask questions, meet the presenters, and take part in the generative conversations that developed during the breaks.

BNG: Anything surprising?

LH: A surprising and enjoyable thread was the focus of several presenters on the personal side of the work, from a Chief Preparator whose uncle was the subject of a famous photograph, and his experience meeting the artist many years later, to a presentation on the best ‘everyday carry’, where the most important tool wasn’t a tape measure or level, but ultimately the community and connections developed along the way. For most, a career in the arts is more than a job – art can be deeply personal – and it was clear from both conference presentations and hallway conversations that PACCIN members are a group that care passionately about not only the objects and artworks in their care, but the community within the industry.

BNG: Do you have any takeaways that you’ll bring home?

LH: It was a privilege to meet museum peers from across the world, and hear others speak candidly and generously about the joys and challenges of the profession. Despite the varied institutions and countries represented, there was more common ground between attendees than not. One of my key takeaways was that everyone faces the same challenges; at a smaller institution they may be on a different scale, but the core elements are the same – storage, climate control, exhibition timelines, funding, everyone is grappling with these obstacles. However, at the same time, PACCIN certainly showed me that where there’s a will, there’s a way. With appropriate supports, no artwork or exhibition is too ambitious, and creative problem-solving is ubiquitous across roles. Seeing how others are tackling demanding installs and collections conundrums was both inspiring and reinvigorating.

The conference also reaffirmed what is special about Bermuda National Gallery. While we don’t necessarily have access to the same resources available overseas or at a larger institution, there are also strengths to having a small, tightly-knit team. Our Executive Director, Jennifer Phillips, is fully hands-on, and we have a Board of Trustees that are also closely embedded in the Gallery’s operations. As a result, there is a true understanding across the museum of what it takes to stage an exhibition from start to finish, with installation logistics folded into exhibition planning from an early stage.

BNG: And how was Stockholm? Any other highlights?

LH: Stockholm was a beautiful, walkable, city to explore, and certainly a museum lover’s dream. Following the conference, I visited the iconic Vasa Museum, with its mind-blowing preservation of an intact 17th-century warship, and with the 10pm Nordic sunset and even later closing hours, I was able to make an evening trip to the Fotografiska photography museum to see their sharp and funny Martin Parr show. Coming from Bermuda, I always love a city on the water, and Stockholm delivered, with bridges, waterways and public ferries, in addition to plenty of green parks (at least in the summer!) and scenic spots.

BNG: What does it mean to you to have this experience supported by the Bermuda Arts Council?

LH: I am truly grateful to both Bermuda National Gallery and the Bermuda Arts Council for supporting me in this opportunity. The Arts Council is an amazing resource for Bermudians in the arts – not just for artists themselves, but for those in roles that scaffold and facilitate the arts. I strongly encourage everyone to look closely at the Arts Council’s available grants, dream big, and consider applying. I also have a lot of respect and admiration for the members of the Council, so their support is especially meaningful. It is a joy to be a small part of Bermuda’s vibrant arts community, which is made up of so many talented and dedicated individuals. My hope is that by continuing to develop my own skillset through experiences at home and abroad, I can better support Bermuda’s artists in turn.

The Bermuda Arts Council was founded in 1969 by an Act of Parliament, and has the mission to promote, develop, and improve the arts in Bermuda, making cultural experiences accessible to the public and supporting local artists through annual grants and community initiatives. Grants are available on an annual, semi-annual and quarterly basis, across various categories of support. The Education & Experience Grant awards $2,000 for workshops, certificate programs, residency fees, and travel costs associated with achieving these goals.