Jesse took over as Director of the Academy Art Museum in June 2021. We spoke to her about her time in Easton and what the future holds for AAM.
EEDC: How have these past few months been for you?
Sarah Jesse (SJ): It’s been exciting and wonderful learning more about the community and becoming more embedded in it. It’s also been delightful working with the staff and the many people who support the Museum. Overall, it’s been an excellent experience. Plus, I’m having a lot of fun too.
EEDC: What changes have you been able to make?
SJ: Well, we’ve started some new projects, such as the paid Teen Internship Program, which just launched. We have also begun doing commissions of contemporary artists in our atrium. The Museum is in this very nice position of having a whole menu of excellent and high-quality programs that we’re continuing but supplementing them with some new initiatives to keep things fresh.
Our big responsibility is to expand our audience. I think the Museum is a significant part of many people’s lives here in the community. But there’s a whole segment of the population who don’t have a relationship with the Museum. So I’m interested in trying to break down those barriers, to let people know that this is an excellent resource for them and that having access to art can be really enriching.
EEDC: Tell me more about this pursuit of inclusivity. Does this also include different artistic voices and pieces?
SJ: There is this stigma of elitism along with a history of exclusionary practices in museums’ history. All art museums battle this, and we are not alone. But the way to chip away at this is through a cohesive, overarching look at everything we do. And that boils down to the work we’re adding to our collection to ensure it represents the full diversity of artistic expression in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity. As one example, we’ve just added three new works from artists of color to our collection. Representation alone isn’t everything, but it’s very important.
We also need to think about the roster of artists that we have on view at any given time and make sure that we’re representing artists of different backgrounds and perspectives so that diversity is expressed in terms of the types of work that we show. Besides works on paper, we also need to have immersive installations, video art, and sculpture. These can be great entry hooks for people to decide to come into the Museum.
When considering who to hire to run the programs, we put thought into removing barriers that exist that prohibit people from participating in our programs. We offer a lot of programming per year and think about the balance between programs that cost money and programs that are free.
Also important for us is programming. We have the outdoor spaces, the courtyard, and the lawn, and you could be walking down the sidewalk casually and decide to come and visit the Museum and have an experience with the Museum without having to cross the formal threshold into the formal gallery space. We’ll plan on doing more outdoor programming as well when the weather warms up.
EEDC: Let’s go back to the paid internship project. That’s something that’s near and dear to our hearts as we, too, have started a similar program.
SJ: We are paying 10 teenagers to learn the ins and outs of the Museum and to become embedded with our staff. They come from all over the region. We have kids from Easton High from Caroline County and Kent Island. We have a student from the Wye River Upper School, and so some of them travel a little bit of a distance, and some of them are right here in Easton.
Their task is to essentially be representatives of the Museum, in charge of programming for teens. Their capstone project will be organizing a teen night at the Museum and giving tours of the Museum to their peers. It’s a way for teens to have ownership of the Museum because they will be in charge of creating the actual offering for their peer group. We recognize that as cool as we think we are, we are not cool. Teens don’t think we’re cool, and whatever we would come up with would be very lame for them. So generally speaking, it’s always good to relinquish control and let the people you want to serve have a hand in designing the programming because who better to know what this group wants than the group itself.
EEDC: What have you seen here that’s different from other places that you’ve worked at?
SJ: That’s a good question because I’ve now worked in art museums in large cities, like Los Angeles and Chicago; smaller cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma, and a small town like Easton. Geography plays such a huge part in what you’re able to do and what a museum needs to best serve its community.
So it is very interesting working here because there are a lot of advantages, as well as some unique obstacles to overcome. The advantages are that we have an extremely generous community of people here who are extremely philanthropic, and philanthropy is part of the culture here. Since this is entirely how we are able to exist, that’s a great advantage.
The disadvantage, which is also an advantage, is that we are rural and kind of isolated, making it difficult and expensive to get loans of artworks from other museums and have those kinds of museum to museum collaborations. But at the same time, it’s gratifying to be able to do what we do here in an area where there are not many other art museums. With that comes a big responsibility to think through what we’re offering. This is how I think about it: if somebody from around here never crosses the bridge and goes to a museum in DC or Baltimore, what kinds of things do we need to expose them to? And so I try to think about bringing amazing cultural contributors to this area, so that people have a chance to be exposed to that, without having to leave here. I can somehow relate to this because I grew up in a rural and very isolated town in Michigan and always had to travel to Detroit, for example, for any kind of serious culture.
EEDC: Was the Eastern Shore new to you?
SJ: Yes, I had not been to this part of the world before, which is surprising now, having been here for a few months, because it is such a special place with so much history. And it’s so geographically unique and significant. I did not have a connection here, and the first time I visited was for my interview. I now tell all my friends about it. I am like a little kid in a candy shop at this point, feeling like a tourist and excited to visit all of these interesting places and take in all of the culture that this place has to offer.
EEDC: Comment rather than a question: I agree with you; Easton is a culturally great place to be.
SJ: I think about what makes a place interesting to live, work, and visit. The answer is you have to have a great museum, in addition to great restaurants and a great theater, and a great symphony, etc.
EEDC: Are you particularly excited about any upcoming exhibits?
SJ: I generally am excited about all of our shows for different reasons. I like the slate that we have on view now. We have a well-known and established artist by the name of Werner Drewes. He was born in 1899 and died in 1985, and was seminal in the development of modern abstract art in the United States. Along with him, we have three contemporary video artists from DC, Baltimore, and New York who were born in the 80s and 90s. It’s really interesting seeing the contrast of Drewes, who was working with fairly traditional mediums of painting and printmaking, and these contemporary artists working with moving images, video art, and installation.
I also like the breadth of having our collection span from the 17th century to today. This allows us to talk about these important historical figures and set the stage for today’s artists. I also think about our visitor’s experience and how having three or four different shows on view simultaneously gives them a little taste of the diversity of art history.
EEDC: You’re really hands-on, aren’t you?
SJ: Oh, definitely. Being at a small Museum with a small team, we all support each other in different areas. Even though we have our distinct job descriptions, there’s a lot of blurring of the boundaries as we all work together to make this Museum run smoothly.
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