Congratulations
Class of 2009!!!!

2008 Katherine Coffey Award Winner:

MARTHA MORRIS

Thank you to the Washington Post for generously hosting MAAM this evening.  Thank you to our new President Kim Fortney, to Graham Hauck our entrepreneurial Executive Director, to the current and past members of the MAAM board, and all of you assembled here tonight.

Five years ago Doug Alves convinced me to join the MAAM board.  I wondered what I could do to help!  Little did I know.  Five years and about 100 pounds of Hershey’s kisses later, MAAM is reinventing itself.

Katherine Coffey was an amazing person…giving 42 years of her career to the Newark Museum.  Many of the Coffey stars of the past years are household names in our field…Mary Alexander, Marie Malaro, Steve Weil, Frank Taylor, and Dorothy Dudley.   Ms Coffey was also keenly interested in training the next generation.  I think we all know how important that is today…making a commitment to our emerging museum professionals.

With my 35 years working in museums, and now working for museums, I do have a few thoughts to share.

As my husband Joe has frequently said  “museum work is the most public spirited work anyone can engage in.”  I believe that is still true, despite all the changes and challenges museums have faced in recent years.

Back at the dawn of the information age, I attended a black tie gala event at the National Building Museum. This was during the day when Computerworld collaborated with the Smithsonian on an annual awards program for leaders in the technology field. The dinners were always over the top. At each table there would be some kind of clever toys for the guests to play with and test their creativity.  One year it was building blocks…where we could build anything from a log cabin to a new museum! The neat thing about the blocks was that they had words engraved on them. As the evening winded down I decided to pick up a few of these blocks. The words I chose were
Passion, Opportunity and Courage.  The blocks joined other symbolic artifacts on my bookcase, such as the Mickey Mouse ears that Catherine Perge brought me from Tokyo Disneyland.

These three words have been a mirror of what I have tried to do with my career.  Passion for what matters- the collections, the values, and the people of the museum. Opportunity- knowing when to seize it and recognizing the people who helped me succeed.  And Courage-to build on the opportunities, take risks, and hopefully achieve some success.

I fell into museum work probably because it was in my genes.  My mother loved art and antiques and would drag me to museums, especially historic homes, on a regular basis. Probably every one between here and Jonesboro Tennessee,  her family home.  The Mecca was Colonial Williamsburg where we would soak up history and its stuff.

Mom also was a collector…attending every estate sale in a 50 miles radius for years.  Our home became a mini-museum.  When she recently moved into Assisted Living,  my house became the new “nations attic”.

My dad was also an inspiriation for me and perhaps the one that I hope I resemble the most.  He was a management consultant and a federal government official for decades. He taught me about public service, humility, and hard work.  When he died I received a letter a portion of which I would like to quote:

“I first met your father shortly after WW 2...he was one of the best and probably the last of that great generation of true patriots.  His willingness to serve, his total lack of any desire for recognition, advancement, glory or reward; his incredible willingness to raise and elevate the level, seriousness and vision of every job he took on…for me …he has been the exemplar of the Leader as Servant…he honored me with his friendship.” This letter was signed by his friend Peter Drucker. A management giant.

I started my career as a registrar at the Corcoran Gallery back in the days of mini-skirts, tie dyed t-shirts, leather pant suits, and macramé headbands to hold back my long dark hair!!! Times were exciting. I worked for five different directors in five years.  One of these directors (who will go unnamed) decided to hire a young bushy bearded designer from the Smithsonian…this guy came in with skill, speed and intensity that left my head spinning and …I instantly disliked him! I needed to do condition reports and assure that the works of art were carefully handled. Typical registrar. He was a typical designer. What did I know then?

Fortunately, I was able to continue to learn from this fellow, in particular the value of building a team; and about enthusiasm, intellectual curiosity, fun, and yes about fishing, birding, painting…
I guess you know that I married that crazy designer Joe Shannon 34 years ago.

Others who had a lasting impression on me were my first boss at the Smithsonian, Virginia Beets, who believed that the registrar’s goal was to be of service. My first assignment was to help the musical instruments curators do a comprehensive inventory. I was thrown into storage and challenged to understand the cataloging system still bearing the handwriting of 19th century curators. I learned alot.

In those early days I was especially inspired by other leaders…folks like Steve Weil and Peter Powers.   They helped me focus my talents, as did Marie Malaro who taught me so much about law, ethics, and reasonable and prudent decision-making.  Marie also gave me my first taste of teaching as an adjunct professor at GW. 

Along the way I was privileged to work on many projects at the American History Museum including new storage, space renovations, documentation systems, and staffing to support an enormous collection. And later we worked on some incredible efforts to transform the museum physically and to make the place a much more meaningful experience for both the staff and visitor.  Throughout those years the focus was on high standards, accountability, respect, and constant improvement.  Those days were exciting as we implemented new strategic plans, project management and teambuilding approaches.

I need to recognize the efforts of staff there such as Kathy Spiess, Jim Gardner, Patrick Ladden, Nanci Edwards, Lonnie Bunch, Doug Evelyn, and Catherine Perge and many others.  I met Mary Case at the Smithsonian and have to thank her for her collaboration on so many new ideas for leadership development and for her dedicated work with MAAM.

In my 40 years in the field I worked for 10 museums directors. I owe the most to Spencer Crew for his faith in me and willingness to listen to my ideas, and also to serve as a model of sound judgment, and compassion, and respect for the creativity of the museum’s staff. I learned much from those transformative years working with him at American History.

When I was ready to retire from the Smithsonian, Ildi deAngelis at GW gave me the great opportunity to work as a real professor and continue to learn from students as well as share my expertise.  I think you all know that students are incredibly talented …and many are so much more adept at understanding our world. Not just the Web 2.0 world, but all the complex issues that we face in museums today.   At GW Kym Rice and I are continuing to hatch new plans for adding relevant courses such as the Green Museum, offering mid career workshops, and expanding our distance learning efforts. 

Passion, Opportunity, Courage; fun.  I can thank many people for helping me make this a Recipe for Success.

Embarking on new avenues such as the research on Building Museums has been incredible. I thank my colleagues Carole Wharton and Walt Crimm for hanging in there as we turned out our manuscript on Successful Museum Building Projects over this past year.  Yes, we are still friends!
All of us here tonight love museums for their stuff and for the opportunity to use that stuff to teach and interpret our civilization.  Working in a museum assures that we will continue to be learners ourselves.

Yes, museums are temples, places of storage and preservation, and museums are places to be entertained. Museums as we have learned over the past two days at the MAAM annual meeting are Storytellers. There is room for all these roles.  Museums are the most amazing transforming sector of society.  We lead with Passion, taking new Opportunities; having Courage to change.  And have fun doing it.

As our much admired colleague Steve Weil has written:

“The constructive ways in which museums can innovate and explore new dimensions are endless.  In everything museums do, they must remember the cornerstone on which the whole enterprise rests: to make a positive difference in the quality of people’s lives.”   

In receiving MAAM’s Katherine Coffey award I realize this is a milestone. I am grateful for your recognition.  It is my hope to have the opportunity to continue to improve our museums in the future…perhaps not another 40 years, but whatever amount of time; it will be an honor to engage in this work!

Thank you all.

This collaborative project with the Smithsonian involved researching the identity of a boy in a cast-iron coffin found underground near Columbia Road NW by utility workers in 2005. Over a dozen GW graduate students worked side-by-side with nationally known Smithsonian experts for more than two years to help give the boy an identity. The mystery of this young boy's life and a strong sense of responsibility to properly identify him kept the entire team focused and determined. By dating of the coffin, the clothing, and the remains, and researching land records, the boy was assumed to be a Columbian College student, who had been buried in land that once served as the College’s graveyard. GW’s archives on the history of Columbian College proved to be an essential resource and led the Smithsonian team to locate possible living descendents. Through DNA matching, the boy was conclusively identified in September 2007 as William Taylor White, who had died in 1852 at the age of 15 from lobar pneumonia. He had been a student in the Columbian Academy Preparatory School of the College that later became GW. The researchers believe that the coffin was inadvertently left behind when the cemetery was later moved.

The student research team was led by the Smithsonian’s Deborah Hull-Walski and included GW students (now alumni) Dena Adams and Randal Scott. The boy in the coffin is an example of the unique opportunities GW can offer to students due to the rich museum resources in the D.C. area, most notably as a result of GW’s long-standing (43+years) of partnership with the Smithsonian Institution for museum studies training. 

A special on the "Boy in the Coffin" was shown as part of a special on the Smithsonian's Physical Anthropologist, Dr. Douglas Owsley. This special aired on the History Channel on March 29, 2008 at 8pm.