Arts Administration & Museum Leadership Announces Cultural Leadership Guest Speaker Series

March 08, 2021

Join Drexel's Arts Administration & Museum Leadership program for the Cultural Leadership Guest Speaker Series. Check out the lineup below and register!

Guest Speaker: Elisabeth Callihan

March 29 | 7 p.m. ET

Join Drexel's Arts Administration & Museum Leadership program for the first iteration of the Cultural Leadership Guest Speaker Series featuring Elisabeth Callihan on March 29 at 7:00 p.m.

Elisabeth Callihan (she/her) is the Head of Multi-Generational Learning at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where she leads a team in co-creating arts-based experiences with the museum's communities and stakeholders. Prior to joining the Mia staff in 2014, she managed adult programs at the Brooklyn Museum, where she was responsible for an expansive portfolio of exhibition-based programming, including the community-driven Target First Saturday series. Before that, she was Manager of Public Programs and Public Relations at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and Co-Director and Curator of the alternative art space Odessa Projects. She holds a BA in art history from the University of Evansville; an MA in fine and decorative art from Sotheby’s Institute London; and a certificate in French language & culture from the Institut Catholique in Paris. She is the co-founder of Museum As Site for Social Action (MASS Action), a national collaborative movement advocating for equity in the museum field. Callihan is the author of several articles exploring museums and social engagement that have appeared in Apollo Magazine, the Journal of Museum Education, and a chapter in the book Partnership Power: Essential Museum Strategies for Today’s Networked World (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).

Guest Speaker: Sierra Van Ryck deGroot

April 5 | 7 p.m. ET

Join Drexel's Arts Administration & Museum Leadership program for another installment of the Cultural Leadership Guest Speaker Series featuring Sierra Van Ryck deGroot on April 5 at 7:00 p.m.

Sierra Van Ryck deGroot (she/her) is the Assistant Director of Education at Poster House in NYC. She has a BA in Art, Design, and Interactive Media, Fine Art, and Art History from Seton Hall University and a MSEd in Museum Education from Bank Street College of Education. Outside of her 10-6 job, she is one half of the co-presidential team of "The Sierras" for the National Emerging Museum Professionals Network and the outgoing Secretary and Peer Group Liaison on the Board of the New York City Museum Educators Roundtable. In her free time, Sierra can be found reading, visiting a museum, or at an NYC Dig Inn.

Guest Speaker: Johanna K. Taylor, PhD

April 12 | 7 p.m. ET

Join Drexel's Arts Administration & Museum Leadership program for another installment of the Cultural Leadership Guest Speaker Series featuring Johanna K. Taylor, PhD on April 12 at 7:00 p.m.

Johanna K. Taylor is an Assistant Professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University and director of the graduate program in Creative Enterprise and Cultural Leadership. Her work is grounded in a core value of art as catalyzing force advancing justice in daily life; her research pursues questions of cultural equity through the intersection of art, community, policy, and place. She holds a PhD in Urban Policy from The New School and an MA in Arts Management from Carnegie Mellon University. Her book The Art Museum Redefined: Power, Opportunity, and Community Engagement (2020) explores museums disrupting organizational hierarchies by sharing decision making with artists and communities. As an arts administrator she has worked at BRIC Arts|Media, A Blade of Grass, and Vera List Center for Art and Politics. Before joining ASU, she was a Creative Cities Fellow at Stanford University.

Guest Speaker: Nikhil Trivedi

April 19 | 7 p.m. ET

Join Drexel's Arts Administration & Museum Leadership program for another installment of the Cultural Leadership Guest Speaker Series featuring Nikhil Trivedi on April 19 at 7:00 p.m.

Nikhil Trivedi is the Director of Engineering at a museum in Chicago as well as a facilitator, educator, and community builder. His experience planning and executing complex web projects has also brought him to work with institutions to create concrete plans around the healing and accountability from historic traumas like colonialism, slavery, genocide, and war. He’s a regular contributor at The Incluseum and is a project advisor for MASS Action. His writing has been featured in the Journal for Museum Education, Fwd: Museums, and Model View Culture.

Guest Speaker: Alyssa Greenberg, PhD

April 26 | 7 p.m. ET

Join Drexel's Arts Administration & Museum Leadership program for another installment of the Cultural Leadership Guest Speaker Series featuring Alyssa Greenberg, PhD on April 26 at 7:00 p.m.

Alyssa Greenberg (she/her) is an academic, facilitator, and organizer based in Toledo, Ohio. Currently, she is the Community Engagement Director at Toledo Opera. She recently completed a postdoctoral Leadership Fellowship at the Toledo Museum of Art where she served on the Museum’s Executive Team, expanding the porosity between the Museum and the local community through initiatives including re-launching Circle as an affinity group to engage new audiences and establishing The Art of the Cut, an event partnering with local Black barbers as artists. Dr. Greenberg is a founding member of Museum Workers Speak. She received a BA from Oberlin College in 2009, an MA from the Bard Graduate Center in 2011, and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2017.

Death To Museums
Guest Speaker: June Ahn, Rose Cannon, and Emma Turner-Trujillo

May 3 | 7 p.m. ET

Join Drexel's Arts Administration & Museum Leadership program for another installment of the Cultural Leadership Guest Speaker Series featuring June Ahn, Rose Cannon, and Emma Turner-Trujillo on May 3 at 7:00 p.m. speaking about Death To Museums.

June Ahn (she/her) is a Chicago-based museum educator, program facilitator, and illustrator. She received her B.A. in Biological Sciences and Landscape Studies from Smith College and M.A. in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has worked at laboratories at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew and the University of Chicago. Her graduate research at the University of Illinois at Chicago focused on creating informal plant education opportunities for students in collaboration with the UIC Plant Research Laboratory. The series of 23 programs consisted of interdisciplinary collaborations with artists, educators, and scientists that centers visitor accessibility. She has coordinated community science events for the Field Museum of Natural History and is currently the Sustainability and Green Space Coordinator at the National Public Housing Museum.

Rose Cannon (she/her) is a Chicago-based arts administrator and museum educator currently working as the Administrative & Marketing Coordinator for the Midwest Chapter of the American Association of Media Photographers (ASMP). Rose is primarily interested in expanding access to creative resources and careers in the arts through alliances between art spaces, schools, non-profits, and social service organizations. To this end, her graduate research took the form of a partnership with Chicago non-profit One Heart One Soul and young adults with lived experience of homelessness to organize an exhibition at a university gallery. Previously, Rose has worked at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. She received her B.A. in the History of Art & Visual Culture from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her M.A. in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Emma Turner-Trujillo (she/her) is a Chicago-based museum collections specialist. She received her B.A. in Mesoamerican Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles, and received her M.A. in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has worked in a number of museums, including the Getty Museum and the National Veterans Art Museum, and is presently the assistant registrar in anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History. Her research interests include indigenous Mexican codices, the history of pre-Columbian collections in the United States, and repatriation of looted burial goods. Her graduate project led to the creation of the Ancient American Provenance Database, which digitally reunited collections of Andean ceramics housed in geographically distant locations across the United States and Europe.

Guest Speaker: Linda Norris on International Sites of Conscience

May 10 | 7 p.m. ET

Join Drexel's Arts Administration & Museum Leadership program for another installment of the Cultural Leadership Guest Speaker Series featuring Linda Norris on May 10 at 7:00 p.m. speaking about International Sites of Conscience.

Linda Norris is Senior Specialist, Methodology and Practice at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC) In this role she facilitates connections and builds the capacity of members and other organizations in the work of using the past to create a more just future. ICSC is s the only global network of historic sites, museums and memory initiatives that connects past struggles to today’s movements for human rights.