Meet the BACC Board: Tim Campbell

As one of the few nonprofit regional conservation centers in the United States, and the only such center in the western region, the Balboa Art Conservation Center is undergoing transformational change as it shifts into a radically inclusive and accessible art conservation organization. The BACC Board helps nourish this shift while ensuring the organization's vision for inclusion has long-term systemic impact. 

The BACC Board of Trustees is led by Board President Dana Springs and boasts a board membership that is 50% BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). In addition to its racial diversity, BACC board members are located throughout BACC’s service area, including Seattle, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego. They bring a range and depth of expertise in community organizing, arts management and advocacy, fundraising, conservation, education, and financial management. Their diverse perspectives and skills are essential as BACC seeks to fulfill its vision for equity and healing within our own structure and workplace, as well as the communities we serve. 

Throughout 2023, we are highlighting each of our Board Members to better understand what excites them about being a part of the BACC Team at this transformative time. 

Tim Campbell (he/him) began his career in the arts after graduating from Occidental College at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, acting as the Collections Manager, working with volunteers, docents, and assisting curators and registrars with exhibitions. After the Bowers, Tim was a Visiting Researcher at the Tokyo University Museum in Japan, assisting curators with exhibition research for two years. Upon returning from Japan, Tim worked at Disney’s Animation Research Library for a decade, expanding his experience with art conservation, creation and tracking of digital images, the different approaches of archives vs. museums, and the licensing of intellectual property. Following his work with Disney, Tim worked with Blizzard Entertainment to start a culture of exhibitions, providing access to art created over the company’s 20-year history. In addition to displays of artwork at Blizzard’s offices and events worldwide, he was able to partner with art galleries and museums for a program of external exhibitions, including a very successful exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei in 2010. After leaving Blizzard in 2012, Tim took a position at the Laguna Art Museum, and served as Collections Manager, Registrar, and Manager of Collections and Registration until 2023. Tim has been the Curator at the Golden West College Art Gallery, taught courses in the museum studies program at Irvine Valley College, and is currently the Art Gallery Technician for three gallery spaces run by Santa Ana College, occasionally curating exhibitions. Tim also serves on the Board of Directors of The Chimaera Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women and non-binary filmmakers to help change the landscape of hiring practices in the film industry.

BACC: How does your professional, community, and/or cultural work inform your role as a BACC Board Member? 
Tim: I have had the opportunity to work with large collections of art on paper, as well as paintings, and have been the point person to contract the services of conservators for many projects over the years, so I have a fundamental understanding of the business involved. I have also had an interest in preservation and conservation since my earliest museum days, which inspired me to join the Western Association for Art Conservation and to audit classes in conservation science while living in Tokyo (taught by Frank Preusser, first staff member of the Getty Conservation Institute).

B: What excites you most about being on the BACC Board? 
T: I hope that I am contributing in my small way to support a good cause, helping to provide an excellent and needed resource, one which has grown in mission and vision in really cool and important ways while I have been here, which I am extremely honored to be around and participate in. I am excited to be supporting the people who are doing the work, making a difference, and furthering the institution and the field.


B: If you could have one artwork or artifact (personal or otherwise) conserved by the BACC team, what would it be and why? 
T: Most of my personal collections are objects, books, and photos, but I wouldn’t want to pass up such an opportunity…maybe one of these two items would be within the scope of things that BACC is now equipped to handle? 

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B: We are certainly equipped to treat these! ​

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