As of July 17, Lise Dubé-Scherr will serve as director of museum affairs for The Preservation Society of Newport County. She has a long and distinguished career in both art museums and historic house museums. A native of Canada, she held progressively more responsible positions at the National Gallery of Canada, the Allentown Art Museum in Allentown, Pa., and The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Estate and Gardens in Lenox, Mass., where she was deputy director and vice president responsible for all daily operations.
Since 2011, Dubé-Scherr has served as the executive director of The Richard H. Driehaus Museum – a decorative arts museum housed in a fully restored Gilded Age mansion – in Chicago. During her tenure, which ended in July, visitation grew from 4,000 annually to 78,000 due to her work developing visitor-centered model, distinctive exhibitions with companion publications and the expansion of public programs to include lecture series, symposia, concerts, social programs and living-history tours.
PBN: What are your responsibilities as director of museum affairs for the Preservation Society of Newport County?
DUBÉ-SCHERR: As director of museum affairs, I manage curatorial, exhibitions, conservation, collections, education and public programs, the fellowship program and the Newport Symposium. The museum affairs department works very closely with museum experience, which interacts directly with our guests by leading tours and engaging them throughout their visit.
PBN: What are your first priorities in the job?
DUBÉ-SCHERR: To start, I would like to understand the priorities of our CEO, Trudy Coxe, and to get to know the museum affairs staff so I can learn about their projects and areas of responsibility. My role is to support their work and enable them to be as effective as possible, while ensuring their work aligns with our larger organizational strategic goals and priorities. Additionally, when starting a new position, I make it a priority to learn about the culture of the organization, how people and things work so I can adapt effectively.
PBN: What are the largest obstacles facing the society today?
DUBÉ-SCHERR: From a museum perspective, one of our biggest challenges is that we live in a highly mediated world – we don’t even want to shop in brick and mortar stores anymore. Everything is done through a screen, which creates unique challenges for museums because we are about authentic, immersive experiences. That said, people are craving real experiences and while there has been a surge in the use of technology in museums, we need to continue to work toward finding the right balance between real and mediated experiences. Technology in museums should enhance the experience and not detract from or replace it. Many museums are very effectively integrating technology in creative ways, including the use of virtual and augmented reality, which can enrich the experience of an object, historical moment or site.
PBN: You were previously the executive director of The Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago, whose attendance rate rose from 4,000 annually to 78,000 annually – what experiences will you draw on from that role, in Newport?
DUBÉ-SCHERR: The Preservation Society has the same high standards and visitor-centric approach as the Driehaus Museum. One of the areas I will be focusing on is the development of our exhibition program. In 2015, we opened a state-of-the-art exhibition gallery at Rosecliff, which affords a tremendous amount of opportunity to plan exhibitions that will expand and deepen our visitor offerings and engage new audiences while highlighting and advancing scholarship of our collections.
PBN: What specific aspects of the society and Newport drew you here from Chicago?
DUBÉ-SCHERR: As a native of eastern Canada [Montreal], I spent a significant amount of time in New England, and more recently we lived in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts for three years. I’ve always had a strong affinity for the beauty of New England; there is something about the landscape and people that resonates with me. Newport is not only an aesthetically charming city, but its rich history and deep respect for tradition captured my imagination the first time I visited about eight years ago. I loved living in Chicago, but my husband and I are, without a doubt, East-Coasters. We are looking forward to settling in and enjoying all that Newport and Rhode Island have to offer.
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.
