Full-time Faculty

The Museum Studies Program has two full-time faculty members. Information about them appears below.  Key to the program’s success is that each of these faculty had a distinguished career in the museum profession prior to coming to GW to teach in the program.  Our faculty leverage their professional connections to the museum community for the benefit of our students not only for teaching and research, but also for job placement.  Our faculty continue to serve the museum community through volunteer positions on professional boards and conferences which further raises the reputation of the program. From time to time members of the faculty also are hired for private consulting in area museums that allows them to stay abreast of current issues and practices.

 

Kym Rice
Director
Exhibitions and Interpretation

Prof. Rice is the Director of the Museum Studies Program. Her recent exhibitions (with publications) include: A Woman's War: Southern Women, Civil War, and the Confederate Legacy; Before Freedom Came: African-American Life in the Antebellum South; and Southern City, National Ambition: the Growth of Early Washington, D.C., 1800-1860.

Prof. Rice performs consulting work for the Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the National Park Service, and the Library of Congress. Her books include For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers: The Role of the Tavern in Early American Life (1983).

 

Martha M. Morris
Assistant Director
Management and Administration

Martha Morris is Assistant Director and Associate Professor of Museum Studies. She offers a number of courses at GWU that focus on building management and leadership skills. A comprehensive Introduction to Museum Administration gives the students grounding in museum functions from governance to staffing to fundraising and public relations. The course Managing People and Managing Projects focuses on the growing need to employ project management systems along with sophisticated people skills. Leading Change in Museums offers an intensive view of change and leadership trends, museum best practices, and insights into personal leadership capabilities. The profession has demanded a more sophisticated approach to leadership and the application of modern business practices. The students are challenged to think about creative solutions for managing today's museums.

Professor Morris has worked in museums for over 35 years. She recently retired from the Smithsonian Institution where she held the position of Deputy Director of the National Museum of American History. Her expertise is in museum management with an emphasis on strategic planning, project management, teambuilding, and leadership issues. She also has extensive experience in collections management policy and practices. She has lectured widely on museum planning and actively serves as a peer reviewer for AAM and IMLS. She has published articles on collections management, museum training, organization change, and exhibition development. In 1994 she received the Robert A.Brooks Award for Excellence in Administration at the Smithsonian Institution. Professor Morris hold a BA in Art History (GW), a MA in Museology (GW) and an MBA from the University of Maryland.

 

Part-time Faculty

The Museum Studies Program could not function without its distinguished part-time faculty. The wealth of experienced museum professionals in the D.C. area who are willing to teach what they practice allows us to offer a broad range of courses in all facets of museum studies. Some of these faculty have taught in the program for decades.

Marianna Adams
Visitor Perspective

Dr. Marianna Adams has headed education departments at the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, and Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. She served as National Principal's Initiative co-coordinator for the summer 1995 Teacher Institute at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has taught public and private school K-12, high school literature and composition, middle and high school art, middle school social studies, and has worked with elementary-level emotionally disturbed children. As head of the visual arts subcommittee, she served on the National Arts Education Assessment Consensus Project from 1992-1994. She has been active in the Museum Education Division of the National Art Education Association, serving as the Southeast Regional Director and being awarded the Southeast Museum Educator of the Year for 1994 and National Museum Educator of the Year for 2001. Adams received her doctorate in education policy studies from the George Washington University, and has wide experience in conducting evaluation studies in all types of museums and cultural organizations across the country. Research priorities include evaluation as an agent of organizational change, participatory evaluation as a professional development opportunity, the impact of multi-visit museum programs on student learning, and learning in interactive/participatory experiences in art museums.

 

Terri Anderson
Collections Management

Ms. Anderson is the John & Neville Bryan Director of Museum Collections for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.   Ms. Anderson received a Master's Degree in Museum Studies from the GW Museum Studies program in 2002, and a BA in English and Anthropology from theCollege of William and Mary.  While a GW student, Ms. Anderson studied museum practices in Japan and Nepal.

 

 

 

Tom Berger
Nonprofit Fiscal Management

Prof. Berger is President, Manchester Associates, a consultancy, and a recognized authority in strategic and financial planning; managing change; organizational development; and investment planning. He has written and spoken extensively on these issues and has been a leader in establishing measurement practices for cultural institutions in the United States and overseas. He has served as Vice President Finance/Administration, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer for a number of prestigious institutions including Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago; Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, Dearborn, MI; Museum of Science, Boston; and Hood College, Frederick, MD. In addition he was Deputy Treasurer of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

An adjunct professor in the Graduate Program in Museum Studies at George Washington University and at the University of Baltimore in the graduate program in Economics / Finance / Management Science, he is a Leadership Board Director of Financial Executives International (FEI) and is currently president of the Baltimore Chapter of FEI. Berger also serves as Treasurer of the Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre Foundation in New York City.

Prof. Berger holds a BFA from Denison University and a MBA in Finance and Strategic Planning from Boston College.

 

Barbara Brennan
Exhibit Design

Barbara Brennan has been an exhibition designer at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum since 1980. Her work includes Star Trek and the Sixties (1993); How Things Fly, a hands-on interactive gallery (1996); and The Wright Brothers & the Invention of the Aerial Age, which opened in October 2003 to celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the invention of the airplane. Currently at the Museum she is senior designer on America by Air, a major new exhibition scheduled to open in 2007.In addition to exhibition design, Barbara has lectured on graphic design, art history, and exhibition design at Northern Virginia Community College, George Washington University, and American University in Washington, DC.

 

Clare Brown
Exhibit Design and Graphics

Clare Brown, a graduate of the GWU Museum Studies Program (1998), has designed exhibits and graphics for museums, companies, and individuals in the metropolitan areas of New York and Washington D.C. for the past 10 years. Currently, Clare is designing exhibits and graphics as the owner of Clare Brown Designs. Recent clients include Episcopal High School (Alexandria, VA) and the New York City Association of the Bar (New York, NY). Clare is also employed intermittenly as an Exhibit Designer for the National Museum of American History. She teaches Museum Studies 272: Advanced Design Studio, a course that increases students' exhibit design skills through design theory and training in Vectorworks (2-D and 3-D) and other exhibit/graphic design softwar. Students complete the course with a professional-level exhibit design package including floorplans, elevations, construction details, exhibit graphics and renderings.

 

Mary Coughlin
Preventive Conservation

Mary Coughlin is an Objects Conservator at the National Museum of American History. She received her B.A. in Historic Preservation from Mary Washington College and her M.S. from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation where she was an objects major with a focus on preventive conservation. Mary continues to stay connected to the Winterthur program by presenting annual lectures to first year students on plastics conservation as well as the role of housekeeping in historic homes and museums.  Mary has interned at the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Park Service and English Heritage. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Washington Conservation Guild since 2005.

 

John Fleckner
Archival Practices

John Fleckner is senior archivist at the National Museum of American
History.  As chief archivist, 1982-2004, he established the Archives Center
and managed a staff of up to sixteen professionals.  He has served on the
Museum's Collections, Strategic Planning, and Exhibits and Programs
Committees.   Fleckner is a past president and fellow of the Society of
American Archivists.  Topics he has written on include Native American
archives, business history, archival surveys, and the archival profession.

 

 

 

Catharine Hawks
Preventive Conservation

Prof. Hawks serves as a conservation consultant to many museums, including the New York State Museum, Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Botanic Garden Herbarium, and the American Museum of Natural History. Prof. Hawks also served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Museum Studies Graduate Program of the University of Nebraska, 1994-97. Her publications include Storage of Natural History Collections: A Preventative Conservation Approach [edited with C. Rose and H. Genoways] (1995).

 

Deborah Hull-Walski and Lisa Palmer
Collections Management

 

Jessica Luke
Visitor Perspectives in Exhibition Development

Jessica Luke is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Learning Innovation, an Annapolis, MD-based not-for-profit learning research and development organization. She has ten years of experience studying learning in museums, and has conducted myriad research and evaluation studies in support of program and exhibition development at art museums, children’s museums, and science centers across the country. Jessica’s research is focused on museums and community, in particular related to issues of youth development and parent involvement. She has recently published on these topics in Curator, Museum News, and Science Education.

Jessica received a B.A. in Art History from Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada, an M.A. in Museum Studies from University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and is currently working on a Ph.D. in Human Development at University of Maryland College Park.

 

Thomas Kline
Cultural Property Law

Thomas Kline is a lawyer, practicing in the Washington, DC office of the firm Andrews Kurth LLP. He concentrates his practice in civil litigation, arbitration, and alternate dispute resolution, particularly in the areas of art, antiquities, and cultural property. He has represented U.S. and German Museums, Holocaust victims, collectors, and others in recent high-profile legal cases involving cultural property claims. He is a noted authority on the legal and ethical issues faced by museums dealing with ownership and restitution of stolen art and cultural property.

Robert Leopold
Digital Imaging

Robert Leopold is the director of the National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives at the Smithsonian Institution and co-chair of the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records. He serves on the Smithsonian Collections Advisory Committee; the Archives Board of Advisors of the National Museum of the American Indian; the Ethnographic Thesaurus Advisory Board of the American Folklife Center; and the advisory panel of the Rosetta Project. Robert teaches Digital Imaging for Museums: Policy and Practice, a course that builds on his experience managing a digital imaging program and creating online exhibits that support ethnographic research and promote the repatriation of knowledge to indigenous communities. He recently served as project director for the online exhibit Lakota Winter Counts, which received a Webby Award (for Best Cultural Institution web site) and the U.N. World Summit Award (for Best E-Culture Web Site). Robert received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology and African Studies from Indiana University.

 

Allyson Purpura
Museum Theory

Allyson Purpura received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a Certificate in museum studies from George Washington University. Her research on the cultural construction of Islamic expertise in Zanzibar excited her current interest in the broader social and historical connections between knowledge and power, particularly as they play out in the representational practices of museums. She is currently curatorial research specialist at the National Museum of African Art.

 

Daniel Rogers
Museums and the Public

Dr. Rogers is Chairman of the Department of Anthropology and Curator of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. For almost thirty years he has conducted archaeological and historical research in different regions of the world. As Director of the Latin American Research Program and later as Co-Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian he was involved with planning a variety of public programs and became especially concerned with issues of how museums interact with their audiences. His particular interests in Museum Studies include developing audience diversity, community partnerships, trends in museum organization, and measuring program outcomes.

 

Philip D. Spiess II
Artifact Studies: History of Museums; History of Technology

Prof. Spiess is the founder of the Center for Historic Preservation at Mary Washington College and was the first instructor in that college's museum studies degree program. He has taught in the George Washington University Museum Studies Program since 1984, including the courses "Introduction to Museum Studies: History and Philosophy of Museums" and "Collections Management in the History Museum." He has been a guest lecturer in a number of museum studies programs worldwide. Other current activities: Prof. Spiess has also served as a consultant to a number of museums, including the National Museum of American History, The American Association of Museums, the National Institute of Health, and the Kyonggi Provincial Museum in Korea. He served as the first president of the Washington,DC chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology. He is considered a specialist in the history of the bathroom and the history of drinking (specialties developed out of his extracurricular activities) and the fastest (but accurate) historical researcher in Washington! Recent publications: "Museum Studies: Are They Doing Their Job?" in Museum News (November/December 1996); "Toothkeys to Prosthodontics" in Cadueus (Winter 1997); "The Impossible Museum: The Smithsonian Celebrates 150 Years," in Museum News (July/August 1996); "Toward a New Professionalism: American Museums in the 1920's and 1930's" in Museum News (March/April 1996). He is currently working on the book-length "Subjects and Objects: South Kensington and the Rise of the Educational Museum."

 

Shelley Sturman
Preventive Conservation

Shelley Sturman is Head of the Object Conservation Department at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Brandeis University and holds her M.S. in Conservation from the University of Delaware. She is actively involved as a Fellow in the American Institute for Conservation, of which she is also a former director; the International Institute for Conservation; and in the Washington Conservation Guild, of which she is past president. Most recently she joined the staff of the George Washington University Museum Studies Department to try and carry on the legacy and memory of an amazing colleague, Carolyn Rose. Ms. Sturman has published widely on a variety of conservation topics and has lectured at major universities and numerous international meetings. Sturman is a co-author of Degas at the Races, co-editor of Saint-Porchaire Ceramics, and a contributor to many National Gallery catalogues as well as to various conservation, art history, and archaeology journals. Areas of special interest to Sturman include working with living artists; discovering the mysteries of the Degas waxes, researching the casting techniques of Renaissance bronzes; and developing durable coatings for outdoor sculpture.

 

Program Staff

 

Jacqueline Emerick
Internship Coordinator / Prospective Student Advisor

 

 

 

 

 

Mariko C. Murray
Executive Assistant and Office Manager

Mariko C. Murray has been the Executive Assistant and Office Manager of Museum Studies Program since August, 2006. As Executive Assistant she serves as the administrative extension of the director.  As Office Manager she supervises student workers in the daily operation of the front office, projects, events, etc.  Mariko brings a variety of hands-on museum experience from her years at the Smithsonian Institution. After a short stint at the National Museum of American History, she moved to the Smithsonian Castle Building where she became a legislative assistant for many years.  In March, 1995, she accepted a position as a paralegal in the Office of the General Counsel where she worked with and was under the tutelage of Ildiko P. DeAngelis with collection management and estates issues.  Mariko recently took an early retirement from the Smithsonian where she worked for 25 years.

Mariko attended Baltimore Community College and University of Maryland. She received a Paralegal Certificate from the Graduate School, U.S. Department of Agriculture in May, 1999.  She is a member of the National Capital Area Paralegal Association (NCAPA).