Case Study: Mingei International Museum achieves seamless relocation of 26,000 artworks with Airtable

How the Mingei International Museum moved 26,000 pieces of art

The Mingei International Museum in San Diego faced the monumental task of rehousing its entire 26,000‑object collection during a Balboa Park renovation. Their legacy inventory system had no remote access or API and made coordination across multiple teams difficult, so the museum turned to Airtable to help plan and execute the move.

Airtable delivered a flexible, mobile-accessible solution—using barcode fields to track packing, conditioning, and crate assignments and the Chart block to visualize week‑by‑week progress and individual contributors. With Airtable the team tracked the movement and condition of every object throughout the relocation, gained clear metrics on packing throughput (one week showed roughly 10,000 more objects packed), and completed the transfer smoothly and on schedule.

Mingei International Museum

Alexis O’Banion

Creative Director & Technology Strategist