Academic Museum Association Selects Saarnio for Prestigious Seminar

OXFORD, Miss. – Robert Saarnio, director of the University of Mississippi Museum, is set to attend an intensive, five-day certificate program designed to address the unique needs, challenges and opportunities facing academic museums and galleries.

The seminar takes place June 23-27 at the Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University.

Saarnio, who actively participates in the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries, applied to take part in the seminar in large part because of AAMG’s role as the nation’s leading affiliate organization for campus-based museums.

“Having served as the Mississippi state representative for AAMG, and benefiting so directly from the organization’s daily list-serve dialogs and its annual conference, I was aware of the seminar’s prominence – and its significance as an intensive management learning opportunity,” Saarnio said. “Leadership of 21st century museums is complex and challenging terrain.

“Because of Northwestern’s national reputation for nonprofit management education, I fully expect the curriculum to result in enhanced and augmented leadership skill-building across multiple dimensions, including financial capacity, human resources, exhibitions and collections, among others.”

Piloted in 2012, the AAMG/Kellogg Academic Museum and Gallery Leadership Seminar invites academic museum leaders of promise in all stages of their careers to Northwestern for an intensive program in museum leadership and management. Admission is competitive and selective.

“Our goal is to have an impact on the seminar fellows’ professional lives and, through them, upon their respective museums and the academic museum field as a whole,” said David Alan Robertson, emeritus director of the board and AAMG/Kellogg leadership seminar director.

The seminar seeks to share strategies to address leadership challenges unique to academic museums, including navigating and addressing the diverse needs of faculty, administration, students and community constituencies. The 2014 AAMG Leadership Seminar is underwritten by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, with additional support provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.