BS: New president at Mystic Seaport Museum

Subject: BS: New president at Mystic Seaport Museum
From: sciencegeek
Date: 11 Nov 20 - 06:37 AM

the announcement just came that the new leadership for the seaport has been chosen and he sounds pretty interesting and many of us are hopeful that with his background in performing arts that he will infuse new vigor and support of the grand forty year tradition of the Sea Music Festival and the shanty program overall...

clipped this from an interview back in 2014 when he joined the Virginia state complex at Jamestown: PA: I was born in Newcastle, England. It’s about 60 miles from the Scottish border. It’s as far north that you can go in England before you turn Scottish. I went to drama school at Manchester. About a year after leaving drama school, I realized I was not going to make enough money to survive in the theater. I started to work with organizations that wanted to tell stories, so I used my theatrical background to tell those stories.

That could be as diverse as working in car factories where they wanted to do tours with visitors about cars being made by robots, which were pretty new at the time. That moved into aquariums, and other attractions and eventually into museums.

I have always worked in an industry that used live performers to tell stories and that is really what museums do. They take an object or a story like in Jamestown’s perspective, the arrival of the first colonists in 1607, and they try to tell that story in such a way that is engaging to the public. Sometimes you do that on panels, cell phones, digital Ipads and sometimes by live performers. It’s just really deciding what techniques you use to get the story across. And that’s kind of what I am still doing, telling stories that are as engaging as possible really.

Y: You have such a rich and diverse resume from United Kingdom’s National Museum of Arms and Armour or Royal Armouries, to senior director of Museum Operations and Education at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

PA: I originally came over in 2007 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first colonists. My museum in England that I worked for at the time loaned and armor that belonged to James I and we loaned it to the Jamestown settlement for their exhibition called “The world of 1607.” I came along with that armor to ensure its safety, and a tour around Virginia doing lectures about the armor. So I got to know the organization fairly well. I also came to Louisville, Kentucky, four to fived times a year because my museum in England had strong links with a museum there.

After about 10 years of working at the armories, I decided to look elsewhere for employment and it was pure luck that a position became open here and I was lucky enough to get the position.

Subject: RE: BS: New president at Mystic Seaport Museum
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 11 Nov 20 - 08:35 AM

Hasn't he got a name then ?

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: New president at Mystic Seaport Museum
From: sciencegeek
Date: 11 Nov 20 - 08:50 AM

oops.. sorry.. Peter Armstrong... lost it in the cut and paste

a Geordie... so sorry that Louisa Killen did not live to see this... Lou was such a fixture at the festivals for so many years