‘An exceptional choice:’ Acton Museum taps new executive director
Amanda Lahikainen brings more than two decades of experience as a museum leader, scholar, and educator.
Ideas.
That’s what gets the new Edward W. Kane Executive Director of the Acton Museum “most excited,” she says.
The ideas, explains Amanda Lahikainen, come from asking such questions as “How can we better meet our mission and improve the workplace for staff?” Others are “What did freedom and independence mean to different people?” and “How did local communities develop as part of a fragile new nation?”
Lahikainen, who grew up in Salem, will begin her tenure at the museum on March 15. Bringing more than two decades of experience as a museum leader, scholar, and educator, she most recently served as executive director of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine, which has geographic and historic ties to one of the earliest modern art communities in the United States.
There, Lahikainen increased the operating budget, led successful fundraising initiatives, and founded the museum’s education programs.
She joins the Acton institution “at a pivotal moment as [it] expands its role as a place of gathering, dialogue, education, and reflection during the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution,” according to the museum.
The Massachusetts native is no stranger to the state’s rich past. Lahikainen is getting “more familiar” with Acton, she says. “I love the area and its profound history, and I can’t wait to join the community.”
Lahikainen has a doctorate in art history from Brown University and a bachelor of arts from Wellesley College. She taught at Aquinas College, where she chaired the art department, and at Brown, Rhode Island College, and Roger Williams University. Lahikainen held a Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress in 2012 and has received grants and fellowships from the Paul Mellon Centre and the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University.
Fostering pride
“I have always been interested in museums,” Lahikainen says, “and their role in producing knowledge, fostering inquiry, stewarding history, and creating community.”
Her role as executive director, she adds, “is to bring everything and everyone together in a way that works and that makes people feel proud of their investment.”
Lahikainen was drawn to the Acton Museum for “the vibrancy of the organization and its collection,” she says, and for the “quality of the board of governors and the staff.”
Claire Nelson, president of the museum’s board, says the new director’s “outstanding leadership combines a deep understanding of American history, art, and culture, with intellectual rigor and a strong commitment to public engagement.”
Her “record of strengthening institutional vision, advancing high-caliber exhibitions, increasing access to education and public programming, while building financial sustainability, makes her an exceptional choice,” says Nelson.
Lahikainen succeeds Lisa Krassner, who is now president of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
“To lead a museum that engages history, art, decorative arts, Indigenous history, material culture, and literature — and the list goes on — is very exciting to me,” Lahikainen says.
