My Blank Pages
Several weeks ago, I lost my job of almost a decade at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts. I was told my department would be “dissolved” and, in a bid to reduce costs, our work would be “outsourced” — a tragic turn of phrase, as if my work ethic and network of connections could be so easily replaced. Work gives me joy. I love to complete a task fully and well, to share kindness and mentorship with my colleagues, and to celebrate our successes as a team. I’m sad to have lost my job. But I know from experience that there is always a silver lining. So I turn the page.
Where were you when the page was blank? I think of Truman Capote’s pithy response to director John Huston’s notes on the writer’s script for the film Beat the Devil. A clear message that it is so much easier to critique than it is to create, this comment also illustrates what I consider the terror of the blank page. Capote suffered from writer’s block. And as anyone who has set out to create something — be it a piece of writing or a work of art or a career path — can attest, it takes courage and confidence to get from the blank page to something you are ready to share with the world.
Should I continue to work in the cultural sector, an area that nurtures my soul and feeds my curiosity, but one that is not without its challenges? Many of today’s museums are in shambles, reeling from the economic impact of the pandemic, called out for years of quietly allowing institutional racism and gender bias to take root, and burdened by siloed structures that impede progress. It is only with wise leadership that our cultural organizations can evolve and flourish, as they must in order to survive. I remain committed to sharing art and culture, and this means building multichannel content strategies that meet the goals of audiences and support organizational missions. I am an empathetic leader who understands what it means to manage change within and outside an organization. I’ve worked on both sides of the fence, as a partner in a for-profit design studio that served museums and universities, and in museums like the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are advantages to both circumstances to be weighed as I consider my next step.
In addition to the satisfaction I derived from my work at PEM, where I oversaw a team of exhibition research curators and led the museum’s publishing program, I was able to shape the organization’s culture from within. I built teams that worked across departments to create innovative exhibitions and publishing projects, in both print and digital form. I led design ideations with curators and museum educators to help them think about their work in fresh ways. I oversaw a wayfinding project for the museum’s new wing. The trust and creativity that I nurtured among my colleagues enabled my success. Rather than seeking conventional content contributors from the “academy” of art historians for our projects, we built collaborations that better reflected the diverse community of artists with whom we work and audiences with whom we want to connect. Yet there is something exciting about flying in as a hired-gun consultant and sharing fresh ideas with museum leadership. Oddly, I’ve found it’s easier to initiate and advance change as an external consultant. It’s wonderful to be part of a community, but it requires a lot of patience and resilience to build consensus and implement action. That is time that could be spent researching and generating new opportunities and ideas. I’d like the best of both worlds — to work in an organization shares my values and supports my professional growth, one where the leadership is distributed across a team with a shared purpose and set of goals.
What has made facing my own unexpected “blank page” tolerable is the incredible network of colleagues I have connected with over the course of my work life and who have reached out to me. It feels as if all the small kindnesses that I offered along the way are coming back at me in a swarm of love and good karma. I’ve come to understand that the hard work and strategic thinking and research that I did as a museum professional can be brought to bear as I consider my next steps. Facing that blank page is scary, I won’t lie to you, but I’m inspired and curious at the same time. I want to write a next chapter for the cultural sector, one that allows me to continue the work I started at PEM. I will do this with the help of my network of colleagues and the like-minded people I hope to meet on the path ahead, people who want to work with me to advance the future of cultural organizations and make them accessible and vibrant centers of creativity, community, and vision.
