Leah Burgin joined Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology as the manager of museum education and programs in August 2017. Much of her previous experience comes from developing public interpretation and museum education programs for the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center.
Burgin has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in public humanities from Brown University. When she’s not visiting, thinking about, or talking about museums, you can find her playing board games, keeping up with an endless queue of podcasts and day-tripping around New England.
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PBN: What are your responsibilities as the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology manager of museum programs and education?
BURGIN: As the manager of museum programs and education, I work with my colleagues to create opportunities for people to connect with the hundreds of thousands of objects in the museum’s collection – from early arrowheads found in Rhode Island to Hmong tapestries crafted in 1980s Laos to prints, pottery and photographs made by contemporary Native American artists.
We do this by supporting Brown University’s faculty and student body in their research and teaching, bringing the museum’s collection to local K-12 students in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and organizing lectures and events that are free and open to the public.
Since the museum’s mission is to use anthropology as a lens to understand cultural differences and similarities, my goal is to create interdisciplinary, object-based and visitor-centered learning opportunities that generate curiosity about and respect for all people and to inspire critical thinking and introspection.
PBN: You helped organize the museum’s student docent group, MUSE. What are the qualities you look for when hiring students for that program?
BURGIN: I launched the Museum’s Union of Student Educators pilot program last fall while serving as an education and outreach assistant. MUSE attracted undergraduate and graduate students from a dozen different departments who were curious about museum education. These students demonstrated their dedication, passion and creativity during our regular training meetings, in which we discussed the theory and practice of museum education and learned together through experimentation. MUSE members then applied their training to field trips and other programming at the museum, all in a volunteer capacity.
One of my favorite meetings was a workshop, “Your Body as Pedagogy,” led by Tyler French, a dance exchange adjunct artist. French facilitated exercises that emphasized touch and motion as ways to learn in the museum and MUSE members practiced interpreting objects through movement. I think this workshop illustrates MUSE members’ capacity for conceptualizing and implementing fun, thoughtful and inclusive programs. As MUSE moves beyond its pilot stage, I hope its members continue to bring this approach to education initiatives.
PBN: You also helped launch the museum’s Think Like an Archaeologist outreach program. What does this program entail and with whom does it connect?
BURGIN: Think Like an Archaeologist is a partnership among the Haffenreffer Museum, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, the RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] Museum, Providence Public Schools and, starting this year, the Rhode Island Historical Society. My predecessor, Geralyn Ducady, now RIHS’s director of the Newell D. Goff Center for Education and Public Programs, helped launch the program in 2010 in collaboration with these partners. The program connects sixth-graders with Brown faculty, staff and students as well as RIHS and RISD Museum educators. I’m thrilled to be part of this longstanding partnership and to continue working with the teachers, administrators, students and museum education professionals who have brought this program to more than 3,500 sixth-graders over the past eight years.
Participants develop critical-thinking skills through four hands-on, standards-aligned classroom sessions and a field trip to the RISD Museum, Haffenreffer Museum or John Brown House Museum. By analyzing artifacts, learning how to locate, map and excavate archaeological sites, and digging into the science of archaeology, sixth-graders better understand how scholars come to know about ancient civilizations and practice the process of scientific inquiry.
PBN: Why do you think it is important for today’s museums to have strong links in their host communities?
BURGIN: The museum community has been grappling with this vital question in recent years, and a growing body of scholarship continues to discuss why museums should be embedded within, relevant to and engaged with their local communities. Ultimately, I think this discourse can be boiled down to one simple fact: many museums, including the Haffenreffer Museum, exist to steward collections on behalf of the public and to create opportunities for the public to engage with those collections.
Practically speaking, museums cannot reach every member of the public, so many institutions identify and serve different groups that align with their mission and ethos. The more important question is which communities, local or otherwise, do museums prioritize and how do museums work with these multifaceted groups?
At the Haffenreffer Museum, we devote significant resources to Brown students and faculty, as well as K-12 students and teachers in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. This is because our institution’s history, structure and mission-driven focus are on education. Students and educators are by no means the only local groups that the museum reaches, but I think they’re important communities that the Haffenreffer Museum is well-equipped to serve.
PBN: How do you hope to strengthen the Haffenreffer’s connection to the local community?
BURGIN: In years to come, I hope to strengthen the museum’s connections with its local and more-distant communities through partnerships and collaboration. The museum already has strong ties to several Brown departments and local institutions and I hope to deepen those existing connections while branching out to other university entities and organizations that promote education in southeastern New England.
Expanding the museum’s Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Center is one example of how I plan to strengthen the connections to local communities. Launched in 2012 by intern Alexandra Goodman under the supervision of Geralyn Ducady, this program introduces preschool students to museum literacy through hands-on outreach and field trips.
In the past, participants curated exhibitions based on objects in our collections. One example was toys from around the world. Ducady and I are currently working together to continue this program, bringing in the Rhode Island Historical Society as a partner. By combining our institutions’ resources, we can enrich curriculum content and increase the number of students we reach.
In the future, I hope to similarly demonstrate my commitment to reaching out, listening and finding creative ways to leverage the museum’s resources to make as meaningful an impact as possible for as many people as we can.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a staff writer for PBN. You can follow her on Twitter @FlashGowdey or contact her via email, gowdey-backus@pbn.com.
