Profile
JenniferA. Scottis an anthropologist, curator, public historian and museum expert. Her work, for over 25 years, explores connections between arts, history, place and social justice.
In 2022, The National Urban League appointed Jennifer as the founding Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Urban Civil Rights Museum (UCRM) expected to open in Harlem, New York in 2025. UCRM will be New York’s first museum dedicated to civil rights – and one of the first in the nation to focus on the history of civil rights in the North.The new Museum represents a historic opportunity to build a premier cultural and historical institution that will concentrate on the exploration of those narratives specific to the history of the Black freedom struggle that expanded dramatically in the aftermath of the Great Migration of Blacks northward in urban environments across America.
Prior to her post at UCRM,Professor Scott served in the inaugural position of Senior Vice President of Exhibitions and Programs at the in Detroit,one of the nation's earliest and most significant black arts, history and cultural institutions. Before the Wright, she served, for nearly six years, as Director and Chief Curator at,a historic landmark and feminist museum in Chicago that elevated immigrant rights and racial and econmic justice. At Hull-House, Jennifer led the exhibitions, community engagement efforts and overall vision of the museum, launching anumber of ground-breaking exhibitions and programs both within and outside the museum’s walls. In 2019, the Museum was recognized with the Award for Excellence in Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice by the Association of Midwest Museums.
In Chicago, Jennifer also served as co-chair of the , appointed in 2020 by Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot. The commission was created to lead a city-wide initiative that would help rethink the city’s monuments and public memorials, create public engagement opportunities around problematic monuments and re-imagine new monuments and public art commissions. The project addressed the hard truths of Chicago’s racial history, confronted the ways in which that history has and has not been memorialized, and more equitably and accurately. Jennifer was also appointed by Mayor Lightfoot to the City of Chicago’s Cultural Advisory Council in 2020. She served as co-chair for the City’s Museum Task Force created to help museums re-open under the pandemic. And in 2020, Illinois GovernorJB Pritzker also appointed Jennifer to the newly re-activated Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission to provide guidance forgenocide education, public memorial and commemoration across the State.
Before her work in Chicago, Professor Scott served as the Vice Director and Director of Research for a decade at ,a museum and nationally significanthistoric site in Brooklyn, New York,that memorializes a Free Black, independent community in the19thcentury.There,she led the museum's research efforts andco-curated a number of public programs and exhibitions, including two multi-site history andpublic art exhibitions:In Pursuit of Freedom,whichexplored the anti-slavery and abolition history of Brooklyn, and,in partnership with Creative Time(2014) that explored historical practices of community resistance.Jennifer was proudly part of the team that helped to restore and re-interpret the historic site and develop its trademark innovative programming, community engagement and new applications of history, culture and the arts. She helped to build a new $40 million modern center on the site and transform the emerging campus into a present-day cultural destination.
As an oral historian, Jennifer launched Weeksville’s oral history project, producing Weelsville's first audio archive in over 50 years.This included "The Lost Jazz Shrines of Brooklyn," the first and only Brooklyn jazz oral history archive.The Weeksville oral histories tell stories that touch on a nearly a century of Brooklyn history.Jennifer has conducted oral history and genealogy workshops and institutes with artists, community organizations and universities, and served on oral history advisory boards, including StoryCorps Griot, a national oral history project, which collected the stories of African Americans throughout the US, in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s, the American Folklife Center and the Library of Congress.She also served as an oral historian for Brooklyn Historical Society’sCrossing Borders, Bridging Generations(CBBG), a project to encourage dialogue about differences and to challenge existing social, racial, ethnic, and national, categories.
Jennifer serves on a number of boards. She is currently the Vice President for theAssociation of Midwest Museums, a Board Member for the National Association for Museum Exhibition, and in 2022 she was appointed to editorial board of The Public Historian, a journal of the National Council on Public History.
Professor Scott has taught at The New School for Public Engagement in New York for more than 20 years, and has served as core faculty for a combined 12 years in the graduate program of Museum and Exhibition Studies at the ɫ of Illinois at Chicago andat,where she designed and taught the foundational course,Cultural Pluralism in the US: Museum Exhibitions and Issues of Cultural Representation.Professor Scott teaches courses in arts and civic engagement, cultural anthropology, race and ethnic studies, global studies and museum studies. She researches, writes and lectures locally and internationally on arts and social change, public memory and place,contested histories and innovative strategies for museums and public history sites. At The New School, Professor Scott is also aFaculty Member on the.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Professor Scott has conducted anthropological and art historical research in West Africa, studying women dressmakers, textiles, cloth and material culture in urban Accra, Ghana and throughout the region. She is a contributor to a number of museum, heritage and history publications.
Jennifer is a co-author and co-editor ofAnywhere but Here: Black Intellectuals, theAtlantic World and Beyond(ɫ Press of Mississippi, 2015/ 2017), a volume expanding the traditional boundaries of the “Black Atlantic” and presenting new research on international and historical intellectual exchanges from the 19thcentury to the present.Other recent publications include: a contribution toTransforming Community Development Through Arts and Culture(2019),(2019);“(2017);and“Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-first Century at a Post-Emancipation Site"(2015).Professor Scott holds degrees in Philosophy, African American Studies/History, and Anthropology from Stanford ɫ; the ɫ of California, Los Angeles; and the ɫ of Michigan, Ann Arbor, respectively.
Professional Affiliation
Faculty Advisory Member,, The New School, Nov. 2020- Pres.
Editorial Board Member, The Public Historian, a journal of the National Council on PublicHistory (NCPH), 2022- Pres.
Vice-President,(AMM); Present;Co-Chair for AMM 2018 Annual Conference, in 2017; 2017-Pres.
Board Member for2018 - Pres.
Co-Chair of the for The City of Chicago, Appointed by Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot. A collaboration between the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), the Chicago Parks District and Chicago Public Schools (CPS), August 12, 2020 – August 2021.
of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) for The City of Chicago, Appointed by Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot, 2020 – 2021.
appointed by Illinois Goverenor JB Pritzker, 2020--2021.
2019 - 2021 –Washington DC.
Anniversary, 2019-2020 –Atlanta, GA.
2019- 2020.
, artist & curatorial residencies at the, 2016-2018.
national competition sponsored by the American Alliance of Museum’s (AAM) Curators Committee (CurCom) in cooperation with EdCom and NAME, 2016-2018.
Recent Publications
Contributor tod., Meg Duguid, Soberscove Press, Chicago IL, 2020.
Contributor to, eds., Jeremy Liu & Victor Rubin from PolicyLink and Lyz Crane from ArtPlace America. Chapter: Community Development, Innovation Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco,Volume 14, Issue 2, 2019. / Innovation Review 2019-2.
Columbia ɫ Press, Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, October 2019.
co-authored by Janeen Bryant, Jennifer Scott and Suzanne Serif, American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Magazine, March-April 2019.
Association of Midwest Museums, June 9, 2018.
American Alliance of Museums (AAM), Center for the Future of Museums (CFM) Blog, April 3, 2018. Co-authored by:Janeen Bryant, Benjamin Filene, Louis Nelson, Jennifer Scott, and Suzanne Seriff as a preview for a sessionat the 2018 AAM annual meeting.
(inExhibition, (Spring 2017)
Contributor to Edward Alexander, Mary Alexander and Juliee Decker; Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; 3rd edition, March 2017.
Co-Editor for ,(forthcoming- project:2015- Present)
Open Engagement, April 19, 2017.
(, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 73–88, May 2015).
(ɫ Press of Mississippi/ January 2015; Paperback September 2017)
(, Museumsetc/ Edinburgh [2009]; reprinted 2016)
(,MuseumID/ 2011)
“The Relevancy – Driven Museum,” (The Museum: Agent of Social Change,Heritage365/ 2008)
(Rutgers ɫ Press/ 2006)
Performances and Appearances
Invited Speaker for conference “Inheritance: How Communities are Responding to Controversial Artwork.” Panelist ffor opening plenary session, “The Burdens of Inheritance.” Annual Public Humanities Conference, John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities, Brown ɫ, April 28, 2022 (virtual).
Chair andPanelistfor "Evolving Exhibitions of Conscience: Exhibitions for Social Justice,” Association of Midwest Museums Annual Conference, 2021.
Invited Lecturerforsession,‘Statue Wars’ and the Changing Memorial Landscape,” part of seminarWGS-4401-001 – Advanced Topics: Feminism and PublicMemory, The ɫ of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 2021.
Chair and Panelistfor session,“Belonging and Displacement: Stories Beyond Inclusion,” National Conference on Public History Annual Conference. Theme:"The Presence and Persistence of Stories.2021.
Invited Speakerforsession,. 2021.
Moderator and Invited Speakerfor, IL, 2021.“aimed at building racial healing across Chicago…to promote civic unity by encouraging Chicagoans to connect across lines of difference and support a collective conversation about our truth and our promise as a City.”
Invited SpeakerforWinnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 2021.
Invited Speaker for program series, “
2020.
Wilmette Historical Society, Illinois, October 15, 2020.
Panelist for session “Dialogue Builds Lasting Cultures of Human Rights,” Annual Meeting for the American Association for State and Local History, 2020.
” 2020,
Invited Lecturer for Creative Lab for Cultural Leaders (CLCL) and School of the Art Institute (SAIC), 2020.
2020.
Invited Speaker for.
Speaker forprogramon panel, “Expanded Imagination: New Visions for Community Futures,”Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA, 2019.
Panelistfor session “Doing Public Scholarship: In, With and For Communities,” American Studies Association Annual Conference (ASA) Honolulu, HI., 2019.
“Activating History: Museums as Sites for Social Justice,” Annual Sczepaniak Lecture, Lewis ɫ, Illinois, 2019.
Chicago, IL. 2019.
Invited Speaker for Arts, Place and Social Change for“And Other Such Stories” conversation, hosted by Chicago Architecture Biennial, Arts Club of Chicago Luncheon, 2019.
panelist for a session at The Museum Innovation Forum/MCNx New Orleans. In celebration of International Museum Day, New Orleans Jazz Museum New Orleans, LA. 2019.
- 25thAnniversary Celebration, Brescia ɫ, Owensboro, KY, 2019.
Ramold Center Open House, Continuing Education Presentation and 25thAnniversary Award Ceremony, Brescia ɫ, Owensboro, KY, 2019.
panlelist for session at American Historical Association (AHA) Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, 2019.
an exhibition focusing on the role of feminist artist-run activities in Chicago from the late 19th century to the present. Glass Curtain Gallery, Columbia College, Chicago, IL, 2018.
“Architecture, Place, Memory & Displacement,” Invited Speaker for internationalRoundtable Presentation, sponsored by Chicago Architecture Biennial, Learning Geographies Research Trip, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2018.
, Indianapolis, IN, 2018.
"A Highway Runs Through It: Stories of Displacement,” panelist for session at Association of Midwest Museums, Annual Conference theme:Fostering Transparency, Strengthening Public Trust, Chicago, IL, 2018.
Chicago, Il, 2018.
(AAM) 2018 Annual Meeting & Museum Expo, Phoenix, Arizona, 2018.
Gallery Discussion, for exhibition, In Their Own Form,” thatbrings together "13 artists and 33 photographic and video works that negotiate a range of Afro-Diasporic experiences." Curated by Sheridan Tucker Anderson.Panel discussion focuses on Afrofuturist themesin contemporary art practice, and includes artists, D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem and Ingrid LaFleur. Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL, 2018.
“Past, Present, and Future: The Changing Roles of Women in Planning,” invited panelist for mini-symposium, Sponsored by the Department of Urban Policy and Planning at ɫ of Illinois at Chicago, Women in Planning and Public Affairs (WPPA), the Latino Planning Organization for Development, Education, and Regeneration (LPODER), and the Society for Black Urban Planners (SBUP). Great Cities Institute, UIC, Chicago, Il, 2018.
“Participatory Arts: Using Contemporary Art to Activate Social Justice Issues at Historic Sites" invited presentation for symposium:Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Miami, Florida, 2018.
Live, 90-minute webcast hosted by American Alliance of Museums and National Association for Museum Exhibition (NAME), 2017.
2017,radical women's history workshop forChicago, IL, 2017
Chicago Cultural Alliance, Chicago, IL, 2017.
&,Sponsored by the City of Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL, 2017
sponsored by Weeksville Heritage Center, Brooklyn, New York, 2017.
WBEZ, 91.5 Chicago, Morning Shift radio program, 2017.
"Designing For Outrage" for Designing Emotion panel, sponsored by the National Association for Museum Exhibition (NAME). American Alliance of Museums (AAM) 2017 Annual Meeting and Museum Expo, St. Louis, MO, 2017.
Keynote Address for Institute:, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2017.
- part of lecture series: Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke ɫ, 2017.
sponsored by the Joyce Foundation Culture Convening Series in the Great Lakes, Chicago, IL, 2017.
part of two-day conference, hosted by Washington ɫ and the ɫ of Missouri St. Louis, 2016.
Annual Conference, Science Museum, London, England, 2016.
“Preserving Communities: Rehabilitating Preservation Through Civic Engagement,” National Parks Symposium: Challenging the Exclusive Past: Can Federal Agencies Help Re-orient and Diversify Public Culture in the 21st Century? Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland, 2016.
Keynote Address for 10-year Anniversary Lecture for Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Graduate Institute on Public Engagement and the Academy, ɫ of Iowa, Iowa, 2016.
Creative Time Summit, New York, 2015.
Anywhere But Here: Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World and Beyond, “Cultural Mastery in Foreign Spaces: Evolving Visions of Home and Identity,” 14th Annual Transatlantic Studies Association Conference, Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg, The Netherlands, 2015.
Keynote for Center for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence (CEREV), Concordia ɫ, Montreal, Canada, 2015.
Invited Speaker, “History and Civic Engagement,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, 2015.
Panelist, “Museums and Public History Sites” Healing History: memory, legacy and social change. Sponsored by Initiatives of Change/Hope in the Cities in collaboration with the ɫ of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth ɫ. Richmond, Virginia, 015.
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York, 2014.
“Art and Social Practice in Urban Spaces,” sponsored by Grey Art Gallery, New York ɫ, NYU Florence, Italy, and Creative Time, La Pietra Conference Center, Florence, Italy, 2012.
“Changing the World: Perspectives on the Caribbean Diaspora,” reflecting with artists/filmmakers on the evolution of the transatlantic space and the contemporary, on 50 years of independence for Jamaica and Trinidad. The British Museum, London, England, 2012.
Museum of London, Docklands, London, England, 2012.
“Building a 21st Century Museum: Innovative Interpretations of Freedom and Approaches to Fundraising, Research, and Programming,” Association of African American Museums (AAAM) Annual Conference: Commemorating Struggles, Claiming Freedom, Reginald Lewis Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, 2012.
“Early African & African-American Communities in New York 17th to 19th Centuries” Schomburg Center for Research and Culture, New York, 2011.
“Art on Parade: Between Procession and Demonstration, Carnival and Spectacle,” Wyoming, Ludlow 38 Gallery, Goethe Center, New York, New York, 2009.
“The Use of Textiles in the Work of Yinka Shonibare,” Gallery Talk for exhibition, “Yinka Shonibare MBE,” Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York, a major mid-career survey of work by UK/ Nigerian artist, 2009.
“Traditional and Contemporary African Dress,” Program in Costume Studies, Department of Art and Art Professions, New York ɫ, New York, 2009.
Research Interests
Ethnology/ Ethnography; Women, Dress, cloth/ textiles & Material Culture; African Diaspora; West Africa; Material Culture; Narrative/Oral history; Public Memory, Contested Heritage Sites, Memorials and Monuments, Museums and Public Engagement;