Full-time Faculty

The Museum Studies Program has four 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. To stay abreast of current issues and practices, our faculty continue to serve the museum community through professional consulting, and volunteer positions on professional boards and conferences which further raises the reputation of the program.

 

Kym Rice
Director
Exhibitions and Interpretation

Professor Rice is the Director of the Museum Studies Program. She has taught Museum Studies at The George Washington University since 1996 and previously served as the Assistant Director and both the Program's Interim and Acting Director. A long-time exhibition developer and curator, Rice works with museums and historical organizations throughout the United States. Her award-winning exhibitions include "A Share of Honour: Virginia Women 1600-1945" for the Virginia Women's Cultural History Project; "Before Freedom Came: African American Life in the Antebellum South," organized for the Museum of the Confederacy; and "Taverns: For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers" at the Fraunces Tavern Museum. Rice has advised organizations including the Tredegar National Civil War Center, Monticello, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and the Field Museum on their exhibition projects and interpretive plans. From 2000 to 2007 she served as the co-editor of the Journal of American History's exhibition reviews section. Rice is on the board of the Committee on Museum and Professional Training (COMPT), the Virginia Museum Association (VAM) and the Sandy Spring Museum. Prof. Rice holds a BA in Art History from Tulane University and a MA in American Studies from University of Hawaii (Manoa). She is in the process of completing her Ph.D. in American Studies at The George Washington University.

 

Martha Morris
Assistant Director
Management and Administration

Martha Morris is the 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. Building Museums is an overview of the planning, people, and processes for construction projects in 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, organization change, exhibition development, and builidng projects. She is on the Board of the Mid Atlantic Association of Museums (MAAM) and chair of the annual Building Museums conference. In 1994 she received the Robert A. Brooks Award for Excellence in Administration at the Smithsonian Institution. In 2008, she received MAAM's Katherine Coffey award. Professor Morris hold a BA in Art History (GW), a MA in Museology (GW) and an MBA from the University of Maryland.

 

Mary Coughlin
Assistant Professor
Distance Education Administrator

Mary Coughlin is a 2005 graduate of the University of Delaware Winterthur Program in Art Conservation where she specialized in Objects Conservation. She is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Mary Washington University with a BA in Historic Preservation. Beginning as a graduate intern in the Objects Laboratory at the National Museum of American History, Mary has also served as a Samuel H. Kress Fellow, a Smithsonian Postgraduate Conservation Fellow, and most recently as an Objects Conservator, all at NMAH. She also interned at English Heritage in London and the National Park Service’s Textile and Objects Laboratories in Harper’s Ferry. While at NMAH, Mary conserved objects as diverse as FDR’s leg braces to Star War’s C-3PO. Mary has given conference presentation and published articles on the conservation challenges of contemporary museum collections, particularly with respect to plastic. She currently sits on the Board of Directors, Washington Conservation Guild. Mary has taught conservation classes in the Museum Studies Program since 2006, both on campus and through our Distance Education Museum Collections Management and Care Certificate program. Her duties include the administration of the Program’s Distance Education certificate.

 

Laura Burd Schiavo
Assistant Professor
Collections Management

Laura received her BA from Wesleyan University and her PhD in American Studies from The George Washington University in 2003. She has taught a variety of classes in the American Studies Program as a teaching assistant, an instructor, and a Visiting Assistant Professor. Laura has extensive experience in curatorial, collections, and exhibition practice. Her past positions include serving as the Exhibitions Curator of the City Museum, the Director of Museum Programs, Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, and, most recently, as a Senior Curator at the National Building Museum. Her exhibition, “Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s” will open at the NBM in 2010. The accompanying publication, which Laura organized and contributed to, will be published by Yale University Press next fall. Laura’s other publications include exhibition and book reviews as well as full-length articles: two essays, based on her dissertation, appear in Cultural Narratives: Textuality and Performance in the United States before 1900 (Notre Dame University Press, forthcoming) and New Media, 1740-1915 (MIT Press, 2003). Laura has received academic awards including a Predoctoral Fellowship at The National Museum of American History, a Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia, and a Ford Foundation Fellowship. She has presented at a number of conferences including MAAM, the American Studies Association and the American Historical Association. Professor Schiavo will be teaching MSTD 215: Museum Collections: Theory and Practice in Fall 2009.

 

 

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.

 

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); 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; and America by Air, a 15,000 square-foot exhibition that opened in November 2007. Currently at the Museum she is senior designer on Pioneers of Flight, a major new exhibition scheduled to open in 2010. 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.

 

Sarah Brophy
Green Museum

Sarah Brophy is a LEED Accredited Professional who helps clients develop and fund sustainable museums. She advises clients on institutional greening with planning support and green team coaching.. She holds a M.A.in American History, Museum Administration, College of William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. For the last seventeen years Professor Brophy has been working independently for organizations in New England and now in the Mid-Atlantic states. She will be teaching our new class " The Green Museum" in Spring 2009. This class will examine what it means now, and can mean in the future, to be a green museum

 

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.

 

Tom Costello
Museum Marketing

Tom Costello is a consultant with the Cultural Resources Management Group. He holds an MBA from Washington University, St. Louis. He comes with 33 years in non-profit development and general management of cultural institutions and in higher education. Professor Costello taught his first MSTD class, " Museum Marketing" in summer (08). His class was very well-received and he will be returning to teach next summer. As you may recall, Professor Jon Landers taught this class for several years.

 

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.

 

 

 

Jeremiah Gallay
Exhibit Design and Graphics

Jeremiah Gallay is an exhibition designer at the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution. Prior to this, Jeremiah worked at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Newseum, and the Maryland Science Center. He has also done freelance exhibit design work and has worked at the design firm Threshold Studio. Jeremiah earned an MA in Museum Studies from the George Washington University in 1998, and a BA in Art from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1994.

 

 

Catharine Hawks
Preventive Conservation

Professor 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 the Director of Research & Evaluation at the Institute for Learning Innovation, an Annapolis, MD-based not-for-profit learning research and development organization. She has many 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.

 

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.

 

Laura Seylar
Cultural Property

Laura Seylar is a MSTD alum (2001). She is a past recipient of the Marie Malaro Award for Excellence in Research and Writing (2000). For the past 8 years, she has been a Collections Manager of the Collections Management / Survivors Registry at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In Spring 2009, Professor Seylar will be joining Professor Thomas Kline to co-teach MSTD 297: Cultural Property.

 

 

Philip D. Spiess II
Museum Administration

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. He has been a guest lecturer in a number of museum studies programs worldwide. 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. Professor Speiss is teaching a new class: MSTD 297.20 Material Culture Exploring Object in summer 2009. This course will be a broad introduction to and overview of the methodologies of "reading" and interpreting objects as cultural documents.

 

Jill Stein
Visitor Perspectives in Exhibition Development

Jill Stein is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Learning Innovation, an Annapolis, MD-based not-for –profit learning and development organization. She has had many years of experience studying learning in museums and has conducted various research and evaluation projects and among her clients have included the National Gallery of Art, Cincinnati Museum of Art and the National Postal Museum. Her research projects include “Thinking through Art. Critical thinking skills in a multi-visit museum program” (Department of Education 2003-2006; in partnership with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston); and The Outdoor Living History Interpretation Project” (Institute for Museum and Library Services, National Leadership Grant, 2005-2008; in partnership with the American Association of State and Local History).

Jill received a B.A in English Literature from UCLA and a M.A. in Folkore and Anthropology from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. She is currently co-teaching the MSTD 227: Museum Evaluation class with Jessica Luke.

 

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.

 

Linda S. Sullivan
Museum Fundraising

Linda S. Sullvian is the Principle Consultant of Linda S. Sullivan and Associates. Linda provides nonprofit management, fundraising, and strategic, institutional and capital planning services to nonprofit cultural organizations, academic institutions, and state and municipal governments with cultural programs and facilities. Linda holds an MFA in Arts Administration from Columbia University. She will be teaching the course MSTD 297: Museum Fundraising in summer 2009 .

 

Program Staff

 

Jacqueline Emerick
Internship Coordinator / Program Advisor

Jacqueline Emerick has been the Internship Coordinator/Program Advisor for the Museum Studies Program since September 2007.  As the Internship Coordinator she is responsible for overseeing the internship process for the Museum Studies Program, coordinating aspects with both the students and the sponsoring museums.  As Program Advisor, she meets with prospective students and applicants to advise them on the program and application process.  Jacqueline is a graduate of the GW Museum Studies Master’s Program and has worked in the Museum Studies Program in various positions since September 2005.  She has also interned at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Before attending George Washington University for graduate school, Jacqueline received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and Psychology from the University of Miami.

 

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 and also serves as the liaison to the adjunct faculty. As Office Manager she oversees and supervises student workers in the daily operation of the front office including special projects and special events. Mariko brings a unique variety of museum experience from her 25 years at the Smithsonian Institution. For over 3 years she was a staff member of the Division of Medical Sciences of the National Museum of American History. She later became a legislative and policy assistant for 14 years working in the Office of Government Relations & the Office of Policy and Programs both housed in the Smithsonian Castle. In 1995, she was selected by the General Counsel's Office for a paralegal position where she specialized in estates and wills and assisted with collections management and employment law cases. Most recently, after a long museum career, Mariko took an early retirement from the Smithsonian Institution.

Before embarking on her museum career at the Smithsonian Institution, Mariko worked for the Department of Justice (Washington, DC) and John Hopkins University, School of Medicine (Baltimore, MD). She attended Baltimore Community College and University of Maryland and received a Paralegal Certificate from The Graduate School, U.S. Department of Agriculture, (Washington, DC). She is a member of the National Capital Area Paralegal Association (NCAPA).