Announcing NEMA’s 2019 Excellence Award Winners
People are what make our museums great, and NEMA’s members are some of the most talented and dedicated people in the field. NEMA is pleased to announce the winners of the sixth annual Excellence Awards competition and proud to honor our colleagues' extraordinary efforts. This year's awardees will receive recognition at the Annual Meeting at this year's conference. Special thanks to our judges and to all the nominators.
Congratulations to this year's Excellence Award winners!
As deputy director of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, in Hanover, New Hampshire, Juliette Bianco oversees the day-to-day operation of the museum, promoting a highly functional, interactive, and dynamic museum team. She served as the Hood’s primary representative for the museum’s recent $50 million renovation and expansion. The seven-year project (including three years of closure for construction) with Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners added nearly 50% more gallery space, the Bernstein Center for Object Study—with its three object study galleries for use by students and faculty for college coursework—and the sweeping new Russo Atrium. The museum re-opened to the public in January of this year. Her two co-authored essays related to the Hood’s expansion, “Stepping into the Composition: Collaboration as a Framework for Architectural Discovery” with Hood architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and “Creating the Ideal Museum Learning Environment” with scholars Chanon Praepipatmongkol and William Crow appear in the forthcoming The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth (2019).
Maria F. Cabrera has made an extraordinary sustained commitment over the decades to ensure museums are accessible to as many people of different ethnicities, cultures, and abilities as possible. Through her committed efforts at the Museum of Science (since 1995), she has introduced underrepresented cultural, ethnic, and disability communities to the Museum. As a member of Cultural Access New England (CANE) she advocates for cultural access and universal design at a range of non-profits. Maria has organized numerous NEMA conference sessions and workshops that focus on accessibility, to name a few: Going Out to Welcome In: Authentic Community Engagement through Outreach, Beyond the Basics of Access, Welcoming Visitors with Disabilities, and Access … It’s Not As Scary as You Think. As a dedicated museum professional her experience spans eleven years at the Boston Children’s Museum, 23 years at the Museum of Science, and nine years as a NEMA board member. Maria is very deserving of a NEMA General Excellence Award because of her tireless advocacy work and passion to ensure museums are accessible for all.
Dr. David Ellis, president and director of the Museum of Science in Boston from 1990 – 2003, consulted extensively in Brazil on science centers until 2009. In 2003 he joined The Museum Group, composed of about 30 senior independent consultants for museums; he was President of TMG 2005-2009. He was Interim President of the Children’s Museum in Boston, 2009-2010; Interim Executive Director of the Harvard Museum of Natural History 2011-2013, and Interim Executive Director of the Berkshire Museum 2018-2019. His incredible career combined with his leadership on the new “NEMA 911” program is to be applauded. NEMA 911 is a free, confidential service for members connecting museum leaders with helpful colleagues. Drawing upon a pool of volunteers who are senior-level professionals in or nearing retirement, NEMA 911 is a rapid-response resource that helps untangle problems, offer words of wisdom, and suggest pathways toward solutions. Since its launch in May 2019, NEMA 911 has successfully handled cases from museum directors, board members, and senior staff.
Chris Newell (Passamaquoddy) is the education supervisor at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, as well as the director of education and co-founder of Akomawt Educational Initiative. Chris was an integral advisor to Norman B. Leventhal Map Center’s newest and current map exhibition, America Transformed: Mapping the 19th Century, playing an important role in helping the Map Center bring overlooked native stories to light. He worked closely with the Map Center for months to ensure they included indigenous viewpoints, maps, and materials in this tale of transformation, and played a crucial role in ensuring the exhibition was not only historically accurate, but also educationally engaging. Chris also went above and beyond his role of content consulting by making several visits to the Map Center to give Native-Perspective Tours to the public and to educate the staff, board members, and visiting teachers, and to meet and engage with visitors to the exhibition. His work has ensured that visitors from across the world gain new perspectives on American history and rethink the concept of ‘transformation.’
Nina Ridhibhinyo, director of programs, exhibits, and strategy at ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain receives an Excellence Award for her work steering her museum to an updated mission and vision; nurturing a new awareness of diversity, equity and inclusion; and fostering a culture of audience-centered design and community engagement. In her seven years at ECHO, she stewarded the institutional pivot to an expanded science mission; led the museum’s conceptualization of new phenomenon-based and engineering exhibit galleries; launched a statewide outreach program; and renovated ECHO’s 2.2 acre outdoor campus into a public space exploring sustainable energy in Vermont. Nina is also a recognized expert on Lake Champlain’s hidden monster, Champ, and has been featured in a number of national and international Champ documentaries and news articles.
Meredith Vasta, collections steward at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, receives an Excellence Award for her long-term leadership of the Registrars and Collections Care Specialists Professional Affinity Group (RACCS PAG). Over the last 12 years Meredith and her co-chairs Mary Busick (till 2014), James Sousa (2014-2017), and Daniel Neff (2018-ongoing) created annual workshops, conference lunches and sessions to provide ongoing learning, collaboration, and networking opportunities for registrars and collections care specialists. In 2018 she and her colleagues Daniel Neff and Sara Frankel organized NEMA’s first Day of Service which was held at the Shelton History Center before NEMA’s annual conference. For 20 years (so far) she was been enthusiastic and committed to the everyday behind-the-scenes work that registration and collections management workers do to care for the global history that museums preserve and share.
To read more about our Excellence Award winners, click over to our website for their biographies!