JOURNAL OF MUSEUM EDUCATION CO-EDITORS
Dr. Preeti Gupta, Senior Director for Children, Family and Youth Programs, is responsible for strategic planning and program development for out of school time children, family and youth initiatives at the American Museum of Natural History. She leads a research agenda centered on youth learning and serves as faculty for the Masters of Arts in Teaching program for Earth Science teachers. Prior to this she was serving as Senior Vice President for Education and Family Programs at the New York Hall of Science. In that role, she led the internationally replicated Science Career Ladder Program, key initiatives in school change, teacher professional development, and family programs. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Bioengineering from Columbia University, a Master’s Degree in Education from The George Washington University and a doctoral degree in Urban Education from the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Michelle Moon is a creative museum professional and independent consultant with 20 years’ experience in institutions of art, culture and history, beginning as a program director at Mystic Seaport Museum and including positions as Chief Program Officer at the Tenement Museum, Director of Interpretation and Evaluation at the Newark Museum of Art, and Director of Education at Strawbery Banke Museum. As an interpretive specialist, she has contributed to more than 20 major exhibitions of art, history, and culture, including Tenement Women: Agents of Change; The Rockies and the Alps: Bierstadt, Calame, and the Romance of the Mountains; American Impressionist: Childe Hassam on the Isles of Shoals; Native Fashion Now; In Conversation: Modern African American Art; and Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art. A leader in museum education, she has extensive experience in audience development, programming strategy, and program design for a wide range of audiences.
Michelle’s work has been dedicated to increasing museums’ usefulness and relevance to contemporary users through innovative, human-centered practice and advancement of equity initiatives. She frequently writes and presents on making connections to people through culture, sense of place, and food history, and has published two books on the intersections of public history and food studies, Interpreting Food at Museums and Historic Sites, Public History and the Food Movement: The Missing Ingredient (co-authored with Cathy Stanton). She participates actively in the museum conversation through service to organizations including AASLH, where she serves on the Program Committee and chaired the 2021 conference, NCPH, AAM, ALHFAM, and others. She has served as guest lecturer and thesis advisor for a variety of museum studies programs. As principal of Saltworks Interpretive Consulting, she works with cultural organizations nationwide on exhibition development, interpretive planning, and audience strategy. She is an alumna of the History Leadership Institute/Seminar for Historical Administration and holds an MA in Museum Studies from Harvard University Extension School and a BA in English and Education from Connecticut College. She lives with her husband and two cats on the Jersey Shore, where the coastal environment constantly infuses her with a deep sense of place.
Michelle can be reached at [email protected].
After being Assistant and Associate Editor for the JME, Nathaniel Prottas, is happy to be moving into a Co-Editor position. Nathaniel has worked in museum education for over 15 years, beginning as a lecturer at the Cloisters in New York. Since 2017 he has been the Director of Education and Visitor Services at the Wien Museum (the City Museum of Vienna) in Austria. In his present position he oversees programming and works alongside curators to develop exhibitions for 17 locations belonging to the museum, including a medieval museum, a museum dedicated to Roman Vienna, and Empresses Elisabeth’s summer retreat, the Hermes Villa. Before running the department at the Wien Museum, Nathaniel was the American Council of Learned Societies’ Fellow in the Public Humanities at the museum. And prior to his move to Vienna, he served as Director of Education at the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City and held the Samuel H. Kress Interpretive Fellowship at the Frick Collection.
Nathaniel holds PhD in art history from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an MA in the same subject University College, London. He has taught both art history and museum education as a visiting professor at Hunter College (New York), The Technical University of Dortmund (Germany), Tulane University Summer School (Ferrara, Italy), and The University of Vienna (Austria). His publications include: “Contextualization and Experience in the Museum: Hans Georg Gadamer, Art History, and Dialogical Teaching,“ Journal of Aesthetic Education (2017), “Between Practice and Theory: Dialogical Teaching and Art as Performative, ” Museum Worlds (2018), “Participation Redefined: A Plea for the Central Role of Art in the ‘Visitor-Centered Museum,’” in Sharing Heritage (2020) and “Dialogues on Dialogue: A Discussion with Rika Burnham,” in Presence in Art and Art in the Present (2020). He has held fellowships through the Fulbright Foundation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. He regularly leads workshops and educational training sessions in museums in Berlin, Vienna, and New York and has twice been an invited speaker at Rika Burnham and Elliot Kai-Kee’s TIME (Teaching in Museum Education) Institute in Chicago.
Nathaniel can be contacted at [email protected].