It might strike some as counter-intuitive that Erik Neil, the outgoing director of the Academy Art Museum in Easton, would list education and community outreach before the Museum’s long list of exhibition successes during his four-year tenure as his most important achievements. And yet, when asked what he was most proud of, it was the AAM’s hiring of an education director that rose to the top of Neil’s choices. And the same holds true for the Museum’s significant programming investment for children and working with the Frederick Douglass Society before he talks about the hugely applauded art exhibitions like those of Rothko, Rembrandt and James Turrell.
As he leaves Talbot County for the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, one of the largest fine art museums in the South, Neil talks to the Spy of what he has learned from his experience at the AAM and about its future.
The video is approximately eight minutes in length
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