Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) Announces Award Recipients

The Southeastern Museums Conference (SEMC) is proud to announce the winners of the 2022 James R. Short Award, Outstanding Service to the Museum Profession Award, Museum Leadership Award and Emerging Museum Professional Award. Winners were chosen from a wide range of nominees from across the Southeastern United States. The SEMC Awards Committee, chaired by Rosalind Martin with committee members, Pamela D.C. Junior, Nancy Strickland Fields and Robin Reed, honors outstanding colleagues who have helped shape the world of museums.

Michelle Schulte, Senior Curator and Director of Public Programs at the LSU Museum of Art, receives 2022 Museum Leadership Award

Initiated in 1994, this award recognizes mid-career museum professionals who have shown significant advancement within the profession by leadership in museum activities at his or her institution, within the museum profession as a whole, and especially in the southeast region.

Michelle Schulte, Senior Curator and Director of Public Programs at the Louisiana State University (LSU) Museum of Art, Shaw Center for the Arts, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is the recipient of the 2022 Museum Leadership Award.

Michelle Schulte began her museum career in 1999 at the Telfair Academy, part of the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia, transitioning from a classroom art teacher in the local public school system to the museum’s Curator of Education. She went on to serve as the Curator of Education at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, where she was integral in cultivating community partnerships, developing programming, curating contemporary art exhibitions, managing departments and budgets, board relations, and authoring interpretation. While in Augusta, she also served as adjunct faculty at the Katherine Reese Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Augusta University, and developed the Art Museum Studies Minor program. Since then, she has held positions as the Gallery Director and Chief Curator at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, and the Anna Lamar Switzer Center for Visual Arts at Pensacola State College in Florida, and continued to teach museum studies and arts management coursework. Ms. Schulte currently serves as the Senior Curator and Director of Public Programs at the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She oversees a robust schedule of exhibitions, designs accompanying interpretation and programming, identifies and coordinates acquisitions, and manages a curatorial team of four full-time professional staff, LSU graduate assistants, and work study students. Ms. Schulte completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design and the Georgia State Teaching Certification in Art Education from Armstrong Atlantic State University (now part of Georgia Southern University), and received her Master of Arts degree in Museum Studies from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. Passionate about continuing education and professional development, Ms. Schulte has held leadership positions with numerous museum and art education associations over the last twenty years, with a particular dedication to the Southeastern Museums Conference where she is an incoming Council member and has served several terms as Program Committee Chair and remains an active member of the Committee.

Excerpts from Michelle Schulte’s nomination letters:

Michelle has been an extremely active SEMC member for years and has definitely shown all of the characteristics of a leader in our field. She has been engaged on the SEMC Program Committee and often volunteers to make sessions better; she is an excellent recruiter and will actively find new committee members and get others involved. At conferences, Michelle not only volunteers as a program committee member, a session shepherd, and as a speaker, but also as a mentor for emerging museum professionals. Over the years, I have seen her jump into action to man a table when a volunteer is needed or to fill in when a speaker is missing. I have known Michelle for almost fifteen years and can’t count the number of times I have seen her step into a leadership role and help someone else out. She never asks for any recognition and is often the first one to claim she didn’t do anything special.

Over the past two years, Michelle has taken on the huge responsibility (as a volunteer) of helping to shepherd SEMC’s fledgling virtual program series. Early in the pandemic she organized virtual sessions for museum educators and solicited speakers, coordinated meetings, moderated program sessions, developed marketing content, and kept a running list of innovative ideas for SEMC programs. In addition, Michelle provided critical volunteer support for SEMC’s 2021 Hybrid Annual Meeting as Program Committee Chair.

Michelle has provided a great deal of support for SEMC for the last 20 years and has been a vital component of our volunteer leadership corps. She has served largely in the background, but has always been willing to work, develop new ideas, engage leaders, and question when things should have been done that were not.

Michelle has over fifteen years of experience as a curator, educator, and museum professional. Her sustained, active involvement in the Southeastern Museums Conference has established Michelle as a “go-to” leader in the region for advice and guidance for museum professionals at all career levels. Her skills, knowledge, warm personality, and dedication to museums and their value to communities have benefited the entire SEMC community for many years and identify Michelle as a professional to be recognized with the 2022 SEMC Museum Leadership Award.

Congratulations also to David Butler, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Knoxville Museum of Art in Knoxville, Tennessee, the recipient of the 2022 James R. Short Award; Deborah L. Mack, Ph.D. Director, Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past and Associate Director for Strategic Partnerships, National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. the recipient of the 2022 Outstanding Service to the Museum Profession Award; and Katie Ericson, Senior Manager, School and Volunteer Programs, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Atlanta, Georgia, the recipient of the 2022 Emerging Museum Professionals Award.

The 2022 James R. Short, Museum Leadership, Outstanding Service to the Museum Profession Award and Emerging Museum Professional recipients will be celebrated during the SEMC2022 Annual Meeting Awards Luncheon on October 26, 2022 in Rogers, Arkansas with a live streamed leadership roundtable discussion.

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The Southeastern Museums Conference is the major regional networking organization for museums and their staff in the southeastern states as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A non-profit membership association with almost 1600 members, SEMC strives to increase educational and professional development opportunities and improve the interchange of ideas, information, and cooperation.

For more information, visit SEMCdirect.net or contact Zinnia Willits, Executive Director at 404-814-2048 or zwillits@semcdirect.net