A New Venture
I’m delighted to announce the formation of my new company. The Experience Alchemists, Inc. offers experience design and consulting services for projects both large and small. The company’s mission reflects the founders’ passions: bringing together groups of interesting people to create communities of interest, fostering cultures of trust, inclusion, and common purpose amongst them, and producing emotionally resonant, story-driven experiences. I invite you to visit me at my new home: www.theexperiencealchemists.com
MY Services
PROCESS Work
Sometimes you’re so busy, you don’t have time to stop and think about how you really want to do your work. I have a proven track record of reviewing, re-vamping and/or producing new work flow, exhibition, and installation processes that not only promote efficiency but also take creativity, team building and communication into account. By observing, listening, leading staff discussions, identifying places for improvement and succinctly articulating needs, I can craft a process for you or your institution that will help your projects come together happily, productively, and creatively. A clear articulation of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, the process I write with you will document a collective understanding and serve as a road map far into your future.
interpretive planning
What is the experience you are striving to create for your audiences? And how do you encapsulate your project or institution’s most critical ideas and values in ways that are accessible, relevant, and engaging? I can guide you and your team through an interpretive planning process that is fun, meaningful and, perhaps most importantly, useful to the successful development and implementation of exhibitions, installations or programs. Together we’ll move through a series of carefully crafted discussions that will distill big ideas and key messages as well as the frameworks by which to deliver them in the most effective of ways.
Project MANAGEMENT
Whether it’s a brand new idea or a project that just can’t seem to keep itself up and running, I have rich project management experience to put to work for you. I can take you and your project from idea inception all the way through to opening by helping you to outline and achieve every step you’ll need to accomplish along the way. I can:
Engage, invigorate and solidify working teams
Moderate concept development
Chair and/or agenda project meetings
Generate detailed project schedules (short and long term), including deliverables, milestone deadlines, meetings, and decision points
Craft accurate project and/or annual operating budgets
Utilize current database and project management software for maximum efficiency; TMS (Gallery Systems), Museum Plus, Basecamp, Fast Track, Filemaker Pro, and more
Create long range schedules that take multiple projects and fiscal years into account
traveling exhibitions
Are you looking to get an exhibition or group of special objects out on the road? Whether it’s your first time getting your collection out into the world or your hundredth, I can help get your tour up and running. Together we will talk through the feasibility of placing your exhibition, determine the resources required to move your objects safely from place to place, develop marketing materials for your project, tie into my network to identify potential hosts and draft contracts that will define scope and keep your exhibition protected. Once your exhibition finds a home, you can run the tour yourself or I can do it for you, serving as a professional liaison with your venues and an ongoing resource for you.
public art
As you seek to move beyond the confines of your own spaces and out into the public sphere, I can guide your thinking on conceptual design, site selection, and permitting. Working collaboratively with you and/or your chosen artist, I can help realize the essence of vision while meeting the practical needs of implementation and budget. With creative trouble shooting skills, flexibility in approach, and a can-do attitude, I will ensure your public art project manifests safely, stylishly and impactfully.
Exhibition tools
You may find yourself re-inventing the wheel every time you need to make a checklist, write a label or put together a budget. We all need a set of exhibition templates and tools we can refer to again and again to save time, improve work flow and keep multiple parties on the same page. I can help you develop templates for:
Schedules
Checklists
Budgets
Contracts
Labels and text
Work flow
Meeting agendas
File naming structures
ODDS and ends
I understand that sometimes you just need someone familiar with the museum world to help make a small contribution to whatever it is you’re doing on a grander scale. I can furnish content by way of blog posts, short articles, proposals and guest lectures. I can create, clean up and/or format unruly object checklists. I can help sort through snarls in everything from rights and reproduction needs to design solutions to labels. I love to troubleshoot and I love to organize things. No job is too small. Just ask me.
about ME
I am a museum and arts professional with twenty years of experience in the development, management and implementation of exhibition and installation projects across a wide range of public and private cultural institutions. I came to museum work driven by a fascination with object as storyteller and followed that curiosity through historical societies, preservation societies, children’s museums, regional museums, cultural centers, history museums, art museums, and public art organizations. This diversity of exposure has provided me with a rich understanding of both the importance of different types of cultural institutions as well as the many challenges they face.
My philosophy about the ways by which incredible museum and cultural experiences are made has everything to do with my belief in the power of thinking through and creating processes that promote creativity, teamwork and positive communication. I believe in a respected voice for each of the many people who come together to make a project, be they curator, educator, designer, collections manager, editor, integrated media specialist, collector, community member, or artist. Where there is trust, common purpose and understanding, there is an exciting and meaningful project to be made. I have worked my entire career to showcase the fact that creative energy can co-exist happily and productively with practicality. And that flexibility, organization and a sense of humor will always lead the way. I look forward to helping you or your institution with your next project be it a process, interpretive plan, exhibition, public art installation, or community arts venture.
My projects
2020
Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY - Exhibition Process Consulting
Boston Green Ribbon Commission, Cultural Institutions Working Group, Boston, MA - Management Consulting
Theo Jansen: Strandbeest Evolution, North American Tour 2020 - 2021 - Tour Administration
2019
The Tenement Museum, New York, NY - Tour Management Consulting
New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, MA - Interpretive Planning
Pink Jungle, The Museum of Makeup, New York, NY - Exhibition Development
Futurity Island, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, Cambridge, MA - Project Management
Boston Green Ribbon Commission, Cultural Institutions Working Group, Boston, MA - Management Consulting
Theo Jansen: Strandbeest Evolution, North American Tour 2020 - 2021 - Tour Administration
2018
Boston Green Ribbon Commission, Cultural Institutions Working Group, Boston, MA - Management Consulting
Theo Jansen: Strandbeest Evolution, North American Tour 2020 - 2021 - Tour Administration
Unless, Now + There, Boston, MA - Project Management
The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramon y Cajal, MIT Museum, Cambridge, MA - Project Management
2017
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA - Exhibition Process Consulting
2016 - 2012
peabody essex museum
Strandbeest: The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen (Art Basel Miami Beach & Salem, MA)
Rodin: Transforming Sculpture
Turner & the Sea
Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed, and Style
Nick Cave
Native Fashion Now
Ropes Mansion Re-installation
2010 - 2006
walters art museum
Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe
Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes
Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece
Untamed: The Art of Antoine-Louis Barye
Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces
Bedazzled: 5,000 Years of Jewelry
The Road to Impressionism: Barbizon Landscapes from the Walters Art Museum
2006 - 2004
united states holocaust memorial museum
Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race
The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936
Schindler
Life in Shadows: Hidden Children and the Holocaust
Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings
2004 - 2002
freer gallery of art/arthur M. sackler Gallery, smithsonian institution
Mr. Whistler’s Galleries: Avant-Garde in Victorian London
Return of the Buddha: The Qingahou Discoveries
Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics
The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India
Caliphs and Kings: The Art and Influence of Islamic Spain
Testimonials
“Annie is the ideal collaborator and project manager. She is a creative thinker, incisive communicator and productive collaborator who has a proven record of successfully managing multiple projects and staff needs on varying timeframes while staying goal-oriented. Because of Annie’s strengths in facilitation, team building, and strategic thinking, we advanced productively on projects which involved innovative—“can that happen?”—approaches and multiple moving parts. She found solutions where we thought there were none. Her sense of humor and the ease with which she approaches people, projects, and content ensured all stakeholders thrived while staying project and mission-focused.”
“The Exhibitions team at RISD invited Annie to a series of meetings and asked her to talk through her experiences of best practices in exhibition processes. She brought with her samples, ideas and tools that informed our thinking and inspired us to move forward in positive directions with our exhibition program. Her knowledge, skills and resources were extremely valuable to help us meet our project goals. Annie remains a helpful sounding board to this day and I look forward to working with her again in the future.”
“Annie’s expertise helped the Gardner Museum build an exhibition planning process that is thorough and efficient. Navigating innumerable viewpoints and ingrained systems, Annie helped us identify next steps and key deliverable to make progress on this complicated project. Her attention to detail and willingness to learn this particular institution’s quirks are what makes Annie’s work so excellent. I can’t recommend her highly enough. ”
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Annie in some fairly demanding situations. Her ability to quickly capture the requirements of a project, assess the concerns of the stakeholders, organize and communicate structure and a sensible path to completion are impressive. More than mere project management, Annie has a wit and intelligent manner that directs teams to focus on common goals and creative problem-solving. I can’t praise her skills and expertise as a facilitator and planner enough!”
“I worked with Annie to run a traveling exhibitions program. She ensured seamless logistics, while also maintaining high quality personal skills when interfacing with clients and vendors. Annie had a great ability to focus on details and develop systems to better streamline and organize the process. She exudes warmth and has the capacity to accomplish any task with competence.””
“Meticulous, forward thinking, and practical, I’ve observed Annie guide and lead project teams with the utmost professionalism and grace. Her organizational skills, combined with her wit, allow her to spearhead special projects and exhibitions from conception to fruition, identifying critical milestones along the way and holding team members accountable throughout. Annie is well respected and beloved because her project management skills surpass expectations. ”
“Annie brings the perfect balance of intellect, passion, and humor to every project she manages. Her many years of museum experience, across a wide range of institutions, give Annie the exceptional ability to lead creative projects and keep both internal and external team members on track.”
“Annie contributes strong analytical abilities and methodicalness to exhibition projects while also facilitating the flexibility and creativity that are so important to the exhibition development process. The quality that sets Annie apart in my experience is her keen understanding of the many roles and diversity of viewpoints inherent in every team. She is able to forge effective working relationships with a wide variety of constituents, using her exceptional communication skills to ensure that these differing perspectives are productively employed towards the successful realization of the project goals.”
Contact ME
I welcome an opportunity to speak with you about how we can collaborate. Please contact me via email using the form below or by phone at +1.301.580.0575. I live in the Boston metro area but am interested and available to work throughout the Americas, Canada and Europe.