One of the best parts of developing Open Museum is that I get to spend a lot of time looking for treasure, physically in museums and virtually via the images, video and text Open Museum curators create. Of course Open Museum can’t — and shouldn’t! — replace an encounter with an object in its bricks and mortar home. But Open Museum can quaff our thirst where a visit isn’t possible; pique our interest in something new; prepare us for an outing to a brick and mortar museum; and enrich our experience once we are there by providing additional information and offering various ways to share and participate.

On the more serious side, I’m the founding Director of Heritance, a non-profit organization that promotes open museum practices worldwide and one of the partners in the Open Museum project. Since February 2006, Heritance’s international network of museum professionals have provided free training and consulting to museums on four different continents. Along the way, I majored in French lit at Dartmouth; taught French and Spanish to public school students; and mucked around in business (Masters at ASU, Tempe, Arizona) then philosophy (Master at UMB, Strasbourg, France). Currently, I also teach French and Spanish at Hanover High School in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Encore moi…
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Here’s an interview with me on Emerging Museum Professionals