Engaging Community Voices
On December 12th, the Museum was pleased to welcome members of the newly formed Penn Museum Community Advisory Group for its inaugural meeting. This important group, which consists of cultural arts professionals from local organizations including Mural Arts Philadelphia and the African American Museum of Philadelphia, community activists, organizers, and faith leaders, will play a crucial role in guiding the Museum’s transformation into a truly community-oriented institution. As Williams Director Chris Woods put it during his remarks at the kickoff, “for the Penn Museum to be relevant and responsive to the world, it needs to engage with issues that matter to a contemporary audience. That means bringing in community stakeholders as equal partners in our stewardship and presentation of the legacy of the past. The input of the people in this room will be critical in deciding what issues the Museum prioritizes in its exhibits and its programming.” The Museum’s Chief Diversity Officer Tia Jackson-Truitt explained that members will meet quarterly to collaborate with the Museum in areas including staff training, exhibition and gallery development, and repatriation, and that this group will be an important voice in shaping the Museum’s future.
Penn Museum Community Advisory Group Founding Members:
- Brooke Glickman, Director of Training and Program Development, Better Tomorrows
- Chad Eric Smith, Director of Communications and Brand Management, Mural Arts Philadelphia
- Dejay Duckett, Director of Curatorial Services, African American Museum of Philadelphia
- Gweny Love, Founder and Artist, Mantua Worldwide Community Arts
- Holly Meng, Deputy Curator/COO, American Chinese Museum
- Ivette Compean, Director, Mexican Cultural Center
- James Wright, Director of Community, Economics and Real Estate, People’s Emergency Center
- Lauren Footman, Chair, Ezekiel Community Development Corp; Director of DEI, Delaware County
- Li Edwards, Executive Director, American Chinese Museum
- Lori Ward, Director of External Communications and Partnerships, Better Tomorrows
- Monica Montgomery, Executive Director, Historic Germantown; Founder, Museum HUE
- Renee McBride, President, Cedar Park Neighborhood Association
- Rev. Dr. Malcolm Byrd, Founder, Forum Philly; Pastor, Hopes Beacon Baptist Church
- Romana Lee-Akiyama, Director, Mayor’s Office of Public Engagement
- Stuart Jasper, Managing Director, Penn Live Arts
- Tina Pierce Fragoso, Associate Dean, Equity and Access, Penn Office of Undergraduate Admissions; Member Nanticoke Leni Lenape Tribe
- Tyrique Glasgow, Founder, Young Chances Foundation
New Chief Operating Officer
The Museum is pleased to welcome Genny Boccardo-Dubey as our new Chief Operating Officer, bringing over twenty years of museum experience to this crucial role. Prior to joining us, Genny was Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Chief Advancement Officer and, most recently, acting Chief Operating Officer, overseeing the day-today operations, communications, and strategy and management of revenue sources. From 2015 to 2020 she was Deputy Director at the Laguna Art Museum, where she helped develop art education opportunities and expand access to art for diverse communities—as well as overseeing a capital campaign that led to the transformation of gallery spaces and improvement of the art collection’s storage.
Genny has worked in development and management roles at the Tate in London, the Orange County Museum of Art in California, and at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio. She founded and ran a successful contemporary art gallery in Cleveland, Ohio for eight years. She holds a B.A. in international relations from the University of San Diego, an M.B.A. in international business and marketing from the University of San Francisco, and an M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from Case Western Reserve University, a program closely associated with the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 2017 Genny completed the Getty Leadership Institute program (recently renamed the Museum Leadership Institute). Genny lives in Center City Philadelphia with her husband and their two sons, and enjoys hiking along the Wissahickon. She is a Board member of the Print Center and an active member of ArtTable, the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and the American Association of Museums.
New Gifts and Grants
The Penn Museum gratefully recognizes a new, multi-year gift from Nina Robinson Vitow, CW70, WG76, to support the new galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia and to advance research in the field at Gordion, Turkey; Abydos, Egypt; and in Mexico and Central America.
The Museum also offers profound thanks to Al Ciardi; Dr. Marie Conn; Ginger W. Dietrich, C87, and H. Richard Dietrich III; and Drs. Pamela and Peter Freyd for creating endowed funds to provide ongoing support for Unpacking the Past, our flagship program serving middle school students in the Philadelphia School District studying ancient cultures. The impact of these generous gifts is doubled with matching funds set up by former Penn President Amy Gutmann in fall 2021.
Jess Bicknell Appointed Director of Exhibitions
We are pleased to announce that Jess Bicknell is now the Museum’s Director of Exhibitions. Jess joined the Museum in January 2015; previously she served as Director of Interpretation and Exhibitions at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and before that worked at the Wildlife Conservation Society. She is also a former board member of the National Association for Museum Exhibition. Her first role at the Museum was as Interpretive Planning Manager, playing a key part in developing many important exhibits, such as The Golden Age of King Midas and Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display. In 2018 she became Head of Exhibits, overseeing design and interpretation and coordinating closely with preparation on all exhibition and gallery projects, most notably the new Africa and Mexico and Central America Galleries, which opened in 2019.
Most recently, Jess has been a crucial part of the development of the new Eastern Mediterranean Gallery, working collaboratively with curators and grad student curatorial assistants, our own talented in-house tam of designers and preparators, as well as outside consultants and colleagues across Collections, Building Operations, Marketing and Communications, and Development. While leading this gallery project, Jess also played a central role in the development of The Stories We Wear, U-2 Spy Planes & Aerial Archaeology, Invisible Beauty: The Art of Archaeological Science, several student exhibitions, and projects we still look forward to opening: Ancient Food and Flavor, a new North American gallery, and our new galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia.
Welcome New Museum Advisor
The Museum is pleased to welcome Arnab Mishra, W96, to its Board of Advisors. Arnab is Chief Product Officer for Xactly, where he leads a team responsible for the strategy, execution and go-to-market success of Xactly’s product suite. Prior to joining Xactly, he served as Vice President for BroadSoft (now part of Cisco) where he led a global business unit. Arnab joined Broadsoft as a result of its acquisition of Transera, a company he joined at its founding and where he served as President and Chief Operating Officer. He previously held leadership roles with another software startup that was acquired by Alcatel.
Arnab started his career in finance, working initially as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch and then as a private equity investor at The Beacon Group (now part of JP Morgan Chase & Co.). At Penn, he has served as an Executive Committee member for the James Brister Society since 2016 and is in his third year on the Advisory Council of Platt Performing Arts House. Arnab holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and children.
Connecting through Collections
From January 12 through 14, the Penn Museum in partnership with internationally renowed artist, composer, and educator Hannibal Lokumbe offered a multi-tiered experience around Lokumbe’s original composition Stolen Legacy, a libretto and musical commentary on the removal of art from the African continent commissioned to be part of the installation of the Africa Galleries in 2019. Stolen Legacy is sung in Yoruba and based on individual artifacts that long to return to the cultures which produced them; its commission was supported in part by New Music USA. Stolen Legacy was designed to be experienced in three ways at the Penn Museum. Over several days in mid-January, Lokumbe visited public school classrooms across Philadelphia and Camden with Merle-Smith Director of Learning and Community Engagement Jennifer Brehm to discuss his composition as both commentary and artistic process. Students were then invited back to the Museum for two performances in a packed Harrison Auditorium on January 12. The following afternoon, Penn students and the public joined a conversation with Lokumbe and Dr. Tukufu Zuberi, curator of the Africa Galleries and Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations in Penn’s Sociology Department. At the public performance of Stolen Legacy on Saturday, January 14 in the Harrison Auditorium attendees dancing in their seats didn’t want to leave—lingering in the Africa Galleries long after the work was over.
On Sunday, January 15, members of Philadelphia’s Wings Lacrosse team visited the Penn Museum to join with visitors in learning more about the origins of lacrosse and its connections to the Indigenous team sport of stickball. Team members posed for photos with American Section Associate Curator and Sablo Senior Keeper Lucy Fowler Williams and Keeper Bill Wierzbowski and signed autographs for visitors in front of a display including lacrosse and ball game sticks. They also had a chance to see additional objects in the storerooms.
A video of the team members’ Penn Museum visit was shown on the jumbotron at the Wings vs. Toronto Rock game at the Wells Fargo Center on January 21, where Merle-Smith Director of Learning and Community Engagement Jennifer Brehm and Associate Director, Public Programs, Tena Thomason greeted lacrosse fans in the Wells Fargo Center lobby before the game.