The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) will join the Tier 3 charter program of JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services, with plans to make Stewardship its primary digital collections platform over the coming years.
MFAH’s digital resources include substantial audiovisual holdings, a century of museum bulletins and annual reports, early exhibition catalogs, and other documents recording the institution’s work. Launched via its Department of Libraries & Archives, the museum plans to transition collections currently hosted on other platforms to JSTOR Stewardship, connecting digital collections management with long-term preservation and broader discovery.
Through Stewardship, MFAH will gain access to integrated tools for cataloging and publishing digital materials, hosting and automatically transcribing audio and video with captions, and long-term preservation through Portico. Tier 3 also provides access to JSTOR Seeklight, which uses AI to assist with collections processing. Staff can review and edit generated descriptions, text transcripts, and alt text before making materials available to researchers.
The museum’s decision also reflects its interest in digitization support and opportunities to learn with other institutions. Charter participation includes a role in collaborating with JSTOR and peers on feature development and shared practices, and eligibility for Mellon-supported digitization funding for collections processed with Seeklight and shared openly on JSTOR.
“We began by looking for a better way to work with our audio and video, but quickly saw that the possibilities extend not just across our libraries and archives, but to other departments and centers at the museum generating unique cultural records and original and impactful scholarship,” said Mark Pompelia, Managing Archivist at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “JSTOR Stewardship will help us connect that work, so that caring for our digital collections and helping people use them are part of the same process.”
“The MFAH team sees digital collections as an extension of the museum’s connection with its community,” said Jess Clemons, Director of Business Development, JSTOR Stewardship. “Their experience working across audiovisual materials and other library and archival resources will add an important museum perspective to the charter program as we develop services that accommodate different collections and audiences.”
About the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Founded in 1900, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is among the 10 largest art museums in the United States. Its encyclopedic collection encompasses nearly 80,000 works from around the world, spanning antiquity to the present. Alongside its permanent exhibitions, the museum offers a wide-ranging program of special exhibitions, concerts, festivals, lectures, and film screenings for audiences of all ages.
About JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services
JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services is a cloud-hosted digital collections platform that unites digital asset management, long-term preservation, and expanded discovery pathways—including sharing on JSTOR—with the AI-assisted collections processing tools of JSTOR Seeklight.