Joan Baldwin Email and Phone Number

“Poetry is about those lyric transcendent moments and so is the museum,” Kevin Young, Poet and Director of the National Museum of African American History & Culture“If it doesn’t hurt … then you’re not giving enough.” Luis Miranda Jr., ActivistIn the opening stanza's of his Choruses from the Rock, T.S. Eliot asks, "“Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” It's odd to think that a line written in 1934 in such a different world has such resonance today. That's one of the things that matters to me about my chosen field--looking for the connections and the synchronicities between past and present. They are there, and those of us who work with objects, rare books, and art have an obligation to look for them. Further, we must listen to our audience and learn from them. We have a moral responsibility to tell the truth as best we can, to create what Patti Smith calls a pandemic of good. Ten years ago I was given a job tailor made for me. I work with a small collection in an independent boarding school for students grades 9-12. I am supported by School leadership who are happy to chart new territory in the independent school world--not many schools like ours have a curatorial position--and by an engaged faculty some of whom serve on the School's Collections Committee. We believe in the power of experiential education, of turning the experience of “seeing” into a multi-step pedagogical process. We also believe in the power of real things and the stories they hold. This type of object-based learning is new for many of our faculty, but the Humanities curriculum is enhanced when students explore material culture, study an object, and generate questions about its role and importance in the world, past, present and future.