In 2003, staff at Seattle Art Museum geared up for the most comprehensive series of transformations in the museum's history. The spectrum of activity and change at the institution ranged from the construction of a new downtown museum, building a nine-acre sculpture park on the Seattle waterfront and wide-ranging renovation of storage areas at Seattle Art Museum and Seattle Asian Art Museum. In the midst of these great changes, a small but highly complex collaborative project took place: the conservation and installation of SAM's sixteenth century wood paneled Italian Room. Following exploratory conversations with colleagues at other museums, SAM staff selected James Boorstein and Traditional Line to work with them on this project. A defining collaborative character distinguished this project from the initial planning phase to the treatment and installation of the panels and beyond these stages to the way the room functions in galleries that are now open to the public. In addition to the SAM conservation and Traditional Line teams, myriad personalities worked together to resolve the project; curators, architects, engineers, art-handlers, preparators, stone-carvers, cabinet-makers, scientists, contractors, fund-raisers, donors (in no particular order) all played a role in the realization of the Italian Room, which can be considered a microcosm of museum activity. In this paper, James Boorstein, Nicholas Dorman and Sarah Kleiner will share their experiences of planning and installing the room in the new SAM galleries and the contributions made by the various collaborative parties in the process.