The Authors

  ANNE W. ACKERSON

Little did Anne know when she began her first museum job she would discover a passion that would fuel her work for a lifetime. Anne served as director of several historic house museums and historical societies in central and eastern New York, before becoming the director of the Museum Association of New York. She currently serves the Council of State Archivists as its executive director and is an independent consultant focusing on the organizational development issues of the smaller cultural institution. Anne writes regularly about management and leadership issues for cultural institutions in her blog, Leading by Design. Her article about the status of heritage organizations in New York State, “The History Museum in New York State: A Growing Sector Built on Scarcity Thinking”, was published in the Summer 2011 issue of the journal, Public Historian. A short essay, “Local Historical Societies and Core Purpose”, appears in the Encyclopedia of Local History, published by AltaMira Press and AASLH in 2013.  You can find Anne on Twitter @leadingbydesign.

  JOAN H. BALDWIN

A Maryland native, Joan Baldwin served as director for several house museums, a staffer for the Museum Program at the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Director of Education and Interpretation at Hancock Shaker Village. She met Anne Ackerson while working as a consultant, a friendship that led to a decade-long collaboration during Anne’s tenure at the Museum Association of New York [MANY]. While writing for MANY Baldwin authored three monographs (on mission, hiring and developing staff and volunteers, and responsible relationship-building for corporate philanthropy); three white papers (two on next generation leadership and succession planning in New York state’s museums); and a variety of shorter field reports. Her articles, “Who’s Next? Research Predicts Museum Leadership Gap”, was published in the journal Museum Management and Curatorship (MMC) in 2006, and “Who’s Next: Museum Succession Planning in New York” was published in History News in Autumn 2007. Baldwin is currently the Curator of Special Collections at The Hotchkiss School.

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