Art for all: Plains Art Museum welcomes New Executive Director
January 18th, 2024
By Sabrina Hornung
High Plains Reader had the opportunity to chat with Erin Shapiro, the new Executive Director at the Plains Art Museum. A native of upstate New York, Shapiro has worked at a number of museums throughout the Midwest and even Honolulu, Hawaii, at the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives. In addition to her museum experience, she has a background in sculpture and a strong passion for “art for everyone.”
High Plains Reader: In my research I came across an article that mentioned you were part of the Smithsonian Affiliate program that focused on digitizing collections. Could you tell us a bit about that?
Erin Shapiro: That was a few years ago now, So I was the curator at the Springfield Museum of Art for four years. I was in southern Ohio, which is the Smithsonian affiliated institution. So I participated as a two week fellowship, where you stayed in D.C. and worked with the Smithsonian Affiliate office and other institutions throughout the Smithsonian network, to learn about advancing digitization of collections, programmatic usage of collection materials, and just thinking about different ways to engage the public with art – whether through apps or touchscreens and the different sort of interactive elements that are now becoming more and more a part of exhibitions and online exhibitions.
HPR: I saw that one of the things that you were really drawn to about the Plains Art Museum was their level of inclusivity and arts accessibility. Was that something that you were always really interested in, or did that kind of kickstart a passion for art accessibility?
ES: I was just really interested in making art accessible to everybody, in a very generalized sense. I'm actually a trained artist myself, so I was in sort of the studio sphere for quite a while and people will often say, “You know, art's not for me,” or “I don't understand art” or, “I'm intimidated to go into the museum space. They’re so quiet and people are so formal.”
So for me, I think there's so much more energy and enthusiasm that comes with art and I want to convey that to people and make them feel like they have a place in the museum sphere to learn, to engage, to enjoy. So a lot of my work sort of circles around this idea of inclusivity and accessibility and thinking of different intriguing strategies for engagement.
During my time at the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, Virginia, I was the Deputy Director of Community Engagement. The department received a grant from IMLS Institute of Museum and Library Services to expand accessible programming for groups that are often underserved by the museum sphere – those who are deaf or hard of hearing, low vision or individuals who are on the autism spectrum, who are neurodivergent, living with intellectual or physical disabilities. It was a three year grant that we received to go ahead and start to really pilot these different types of programs.
We're working with art…
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