I’m Rebecca Shulman – it’s nice to meet you! I started Museum Questions Consulting in 2014. As a consultant I have had the honor of helping museums create approaches and resources that strengthen their work. All of these projects have a few things in common: they are driven by questions and curiosity; they are responsive to the varied needs of clients; and they are purposely designed to help clients deepen their ability to impact audiences.
I ask questions because I’m curious, and because digging deeper leads to new ideas and information that help all of us get better at what we do. I use questions, and the paths they lead us down, to create structures to guide our work, and to help people develop skills and approaches that help them do their jobs well.
From 2015-2022 I served as the Founding Director of the Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum in Peoria, Illinois, a museum dedicated to helping children become explorers and creators of the world. I cannot do justice here to how much I love this museum and the team that built and ran it with me. It was here that I solidified my management approach: Let people experiment and explore and leverage their passions and skills; create job descriptions that are flexible and invite collaboration; support individuals in making their own informed choices. When a leader lets people do what they love and take ownership of their work, the result is programs, exhibits, community partnerships, and fundraising appeals and events even more amazing than one could have possibly predicted. Through strategic planning and the creation of learning frameworks we envisioned new programs, exhibits, and experiences, and grew a play-filled, much-loved community space.
Before I moved to Peoria I lived in New York City. From 2010-2013 I was the Head of Education at The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens. If you haven’t been there, please go: it is one of the most serene, beautiful spaces in the city. During my time there I focused on how to create programs inspired by Noguchi’s explorations and varied creations (including the museum itself), and designed ways to better engage visitors in exploring art, materials and spaces. Some of my favorite moments were spent helping teens create their own inquiry-based interventions in the museum neighborhood. One year they placed chalkboards with questions around the neighborhood, and people of every age shared responses to questions like “What’s something you have never told your parents?” I started Open Studio, a drop-in family program where adults and children explored different materials independently or with their community. And I developed new ways of working with classroom teachers, replacing the traditional “teacher workshop” (where museum educators share their expertise with often highly experiencedteachers) with a “teacher team” — a year-long equity-based dialogue between museum educators and classroom teachers engaged in building new approaches together. (You can learn more about this in my article included in the book Professional Development in Art Museums: Strategies of Engagement Through Contemporary Art).
Prior to working at The Noguchi Museum, I was at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. I was first hired as coordinator of the docent and intern programs, but soon found myself managing the museum’s school outreach program, Learning Through Art. This program will forever be near and dear to my heart. Between 2000 and 2010 the Learning Through Art team turned an important but struggling program into a national model. We were included as an exemplar in a dissertation exploring effective practices for training new teaching artists, I was asked to speak at arts advocacy events around the region, and we won two competitive national awards from the US Department of Education totalling $1.6 million. We achieved all of this through a reflective practice approach to program design that involved setting clear goals, aligning programs with goals, implementing and evaluating, and always spending time with what we learned and designing experiments to continuously improve the program. While at the Guggenheim Museum, I wrote a book, Looking at Art in the Classroom, and edited an issue of the Journal of Museum Education dedicated to critical thinking.
Along with my work in-house at these museums, and as a consultant at numerous others, I strive to live a life of purpose and adventure. For countless years I advocated for public education as a parent at PS 9 in Brooklyn. I lived for a year in Budapest, Hungary, where I taught English and created a conference that brought together native English-speakers teaching there, often without formal training or support systems. And more recently, I realized a decades-old goal of taking a long solo bike trip, cycling the 750 miles from Peoria, Illinois to Mackinaw City, Michigan. Along the way I enjoyed nature, solitude, and lots of beer and ice cream. In 2022 I relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, where I am enjoying a welcoming, waterfront, artistic community with easy access to nearby Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, DC.
I look forward to taking new adventures with clients interested in pondering provocative questions, meaningful impact, and team-building. If you are ready for an adventure in envisioning exciting (but strategic) new paths, creating daring programs and resources, or helping your team build skills and community, please reach out!
Museum Questions 