2008 KATHERINE COFFEY AWARD NOMINATIONS

DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS: AUGUST 15, 2008
The Coffey Award is given each year by the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums to an individual in the Mid-Atlantic region to recognize distinguished achievement in the museum field. The award consists of an engraved plaque recognizing the individual's contributions to the museum field. The Coffey Award ceremony will be held in Washington, DC during the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums Coffey Award Reception, dates and location to be determined.

ELIGIBILITY AND QUALIFICATIONS
Nominees should have worked as a paid museum professional for at least 10 years in a principal position. In addition, the nominee should have been employed in the Mid-Atlantic region during the period of principal contribution for which the award is being given. Nominees should demonstrate accomplishment in their role and a record of service to the profession on state, regional, national, and/or international levels. Nominees should also have a proven record of service to the community in which the museum is located.

NOMINATIONS
Nominations should include a letter identifying the nominee and explaining their contribution and must include the nominee's resume and/or curriculum vitae. Nominations do not necessarily need to include a minimum of two letters of support from other museum professionals.

All nomination materials should be sent by August 15, 2007 to:
Coffey Award Committee Chair
Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums
1255 23rd Street, NW – Suite 200
Washington, DC 20037

Questions?
director@midatlanticmuseums.org
Phone: (202) 452-8040
Fax: (202) 833-3636

BACKGROUND OF THE KATHERINE COFFEY AWARD

Reprinted from the Museologist, No.125
Awards for outstanding service are too seldom given by organizations of the museum profession. It is true that occasionally persons in the field receive certificates of merit, plaques and sometimes, although very rarely, honorary degrees. As a rule, such awards when given are presented by chambers of commerce, service clubs, and once in a while, by colleagues and universities. Unfortunately, however, our own profession has rarely regarded the contribution of its own notables.
Therefore, it was somewhat unusual that the Board of Governors of the Northeast Museums Conference (now MAAM) in May, 1972 agreed that nominations from a broad area be solicited for recognition of distinctive and worthy projects within the museums field. It was also decided that occasionally, when opportunity offered, a professional museum staff member should be cited for outstanding service to museology. The award, set up by the Conference, took the name of the late Katherine Coffey (1900-1972). She was one of the outstanding museum leaders and administrators of the nation. A graduate of Barnard College in the class of 1922, she first joined the Newark Museum staff in 1923, left and returned in 1925 to remain on permanent basis until her retirement in 1968. She was in charge of all exhibitions and educational programs and directed an apprentice-training program from 1929 to 1942. During that period the course graduated 110 young people who later became associated with the staffs of museums all over the country. Many became prominent in their profession. In 1949, Miss Coffey became the Newark Museums fourth director, serving in that post 19 years. She had devoted 43 years of service to the museum when she retired in 1968. On her retirement the Newark Museum established the $100,000 Katherine Coffey Endowment Fund in her honor.

With this background of the honor as a basis it is more clearly evident why the action of the Conference was most appropriate when it conferred the first Katherine Coffey Award upon Hanna Toby Rose, who had just retired from the Brooklyn Museum.

2007 KATHERINE COFFEY AWARD

Remarks made by Richard Burkert
Executive Director of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association
accepting the 2007 Katherine Coffey Award, October 26, 2007

I started working with the Johnstown Flood Museum right after graduate school. Before I interviewed for the position, I read David McCullough’s gripping history The Johnstown Flood. I was enthralled by the story. In fact, that experience rendered me unfit for normal work, and I’ve never recovered. I have always enjoyed museum work, and I am deeply honored to be recognized by the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums. I would like to begin by thanking those who saw fit to nominate me for this award: Edy Walsh, Deborah Filipi, Dan Ingram, Bob Weible, Lynda Waggoner, Peter Seibert, and Steve Humphrey. Indeed, it was a vast museum conspiracy.

Katherine Coffey is remembered as someone who introduced many individuals to the museum field. While I haven’t trained so many museum professionals, I do share one characteristic with Katherine Coffey. She was director of the Newark Museum where she served for an amazing 43 years. I have worked for 28 years in same position. While my job has changed over years, I still merit some recognition for persistence, maybe something like a gold watch. In my case, it’s more than dedication to an institution or a profession, but also to a place – Johnstown, Pennsylvania. So, I would like to reflect for a few minutes on museums and their communities, and what that has meant for me.

If it’s lucky, a city gets the museum or museums it needs. Twenty years ago, Johnstown’s leaders did not know that what it really needed was more and better museums. The Johnstown Area Heritage Association and its program is, nevertheless, a distinctive product of its environment. I have had the opportunity to work with one community during a period of fundamental change. During my first decade in Johnstown, the city was more focused on economic development and meeting human needs during a period of 25 percent unemployment. The steel industry had been the basis of the town’s economy and society for 140 years, and the steel industry was rapidly falling apart. Residents had depended on industry as the basis for a way of life, and that industry had failed them. Consequently, the whole heritage of the steel industry was being repudiated and discarded. The general attitude was tear it all down and quit telling those stories from the past. Indeed, many community leaders advocated that the community minimize its heritage and get on with being the new high-tech and bio-tech Johnstown that it hoped to become. My job has been to remind residents and visitors of the achievements made by previous generations, and the sacrifices they made. Johnstown also needed to remember the greatness that had been and was possible. Our goal was essentially to reappraise the historical and cultural legacy of the community, and support community development based on the preservation and development of these cultural resources. With that approach to the past, it was even possible to position the centennial commemoration of an epic disaster as a positive event for the community

If I have been successful, then I owe my accomplishments to being able to create a long-range vision to unify the work of my organization and provide a strategy for the Johnstown community. The Book of Proverbs says “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The same is true for organizations and communities. In my case, I was lucky to work with Dennis Frenchman, an architect and planner from Cambridge, Massachusetts, at a critical time in my career and the life of my organization. It was also a critical time in Johnstown’s community life, for the city had reached a low point. JAHA was planning a heritage area in Johnstown at the same time that the city planning commission had quit meeting. We created a long-range plan at a time when there wasn’t a lot of community planning going on. Further, our plan went far beyond the walls of our museums to include historic districts, walking tours, and even a downtown festival park. Consequently, our success has been greatly increased by allowing other organizations to take ownership of portions of our plan. An example is our successful partnership with the Johnstown Redevelopment Authority, which has built a river-edge pedestrian trail linking historic districts and our museum sites, and has also taken the lead in the preservation of the Cambria Ironworks National Historic Landmark.

As important as it’s been to have a detailed, 15-year vision, it’s also been critical that we be flexible and able respond to new opportunities and constantly changing realities. While many of the assumptions have changed, we are implementing the final pieces of the Johnstown Discovery Network strategy that we first conceived in 1991.

Another factor that has made my job so interesting is the strong and compelling stories that are attached to Johnstown. Every place has a story to tell, and we in the museum field need to work with authentic stories and authentic places. Some of these stories are difficult; my institution works with the Johnstown Flood (a horrifying disaster and a nation scandal), the realities of life in an industrial community, and harsh work done in the steel and coal industries. As noted in my introduction, the film my organization produced for the Johnstown Flood Museum won the 1989 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. While the film is well made, I don’t take a lot of credit for the critical recognition that the film received. It won because the story was so powerful, and the director and I didn’t get in the way. Likewise, Johnstown’s history receives a surprising amount of national media attention because of the strength of its stories. What we have learned is that we need to focus on the authentic stories even if they are painful, and to deal directly with difficult issues and controversy.

Our goal in Johnstown has always been to tell these stories not just in museum exhibits, but also using the community itself. We view Johnstown as a raw info source on industry and the way of life in the shadow of the mills. Not only do we go beyond the museum environment to accomplish our mission, but we have deliberately allowed the edges of the museum field be fuzzy. Our program encompasses historic preservation and special events, especially music. We have taken the lead in historic preservation planning in Johnstown even though we’re essentially a museum group. We also sponsored the National Folk Festival for 3 years and have presented the Johnstown FolkFest for 15. We are also collaborating with conservation groups who are developing outdoor recreation. Ultimately, we are trying to create a mix of cultural and recreational amenities that will improve quality of life and position Johnstown as a visitor destination. This may not be a useful a strategy for every museum, but it certainly is what was needed in Johnstown.

I guess that my greatest satisfaction has been to help build a sense of place in Johnstown. Museums need to help to sustain and enhance the qualities of place in their communities. Much of this comes under the banner of heritage tourism, but it’s much more. It’s providing a quality of life and a working mythology for the communities in which we work.

I’d like to close by saying that museums do matter. We provide core amenities that build a sense of place and signify the authentic character of our communities. This is exciting and important work. Johnstown has a window of opportunity: there is still a manufacturing base and we have a powerful Congressman. But the infrastructure of Johnstown was created for a much bigger industrial city. Johnstown needs to make the transition to a new economy. The city’s image and its cultural amenities will help to position it, along with its natural resources, as a desirable place to live and work. We work with the past, but our goal has always been to build a community with a future. Thank you very much for this recognition.