One of the U.S.’s Oldest Museums Hires Lynda Roscoe Hartigan As Its First Female Director

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, one of the oldest institutions in the U.S., has its first female director in its 221-year history.
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan is set to take the reins at the Peabody Essex Museum this August. Currently the deputy director for collections and research and chief innovation officer at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the appointment marks a homecoming for Hartigan, who has formerly served in senior roles at the Peabody Essex Museum.
In 2003, Hartigan was named that institution’s chief curator, and she was later promoted to deputy director in 2016. She left the Peabody Essex Museum in 2020, and when she returns to the institution, she will have been working in at the Royal Ontario Museum for a little over a year—an unusually short term for an official in a senior role at a major art space.

During Hartigan’s time at the Peabody Essex Museum, she helped oversee an expansion that added 40,000 square feet of gallery space in 2019. Prior to her tenure there, she had spent roughly two decades at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., where she built up an in interest in folk art and work by Black artists. Hartigan is an expert on artist Joseph Cornell, and in 2006, she organized a survey devoted to him that appeared at the Peabody Essex Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
“This is a pivotal moment for museums to stimulate conversation and connection with empathy and courage,” Hartigan said in a statement. “I am passionate about ensuring that PEM welcomes all people to explore our shared humanity through the power of the arts and cultural expression.”

Source link