Day Three

Today's Schedule & Speakers

Priority Focus: Support for Local Commemoration of America 250

Executive Conference Room, National Museum of the American Indian

9:00am > Framing Remarks

Cynthia Chavez Lamar is the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. She is the first Native woman to head a Smithsonian museum. Chavez Lamar oversees the museum’s three facilities: the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the museum’s George Gustav Heye Center in Lower Manhattan and the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland.

Chavez Lamar is an accomplished curator, author and scholar whose research interests are focused on Southwest Native art and the methodologies and practices involved in collaborating with Indigenous communities.

Since January 2021, Chavez Lamar has served as acting associate director for collections and operations at the museum. She was responsible for overseeing its collections, facilities, safety and information technology departments. She led efforts to ensure effective management of and care for the museum’s collection, which is composed of more than 1 million objects and photographs and more than 500,000 digitized images, films and other media documenting Native communities, events and organizations.

Chavez Lamar has been at the museum most recently since 2014, and earlier in her career was a museum intern (1994) and later an associate curator (2000–2005). From 2014 through 2020, Chavez Lamar served as assistant director for collections at the museum. She guided the overall stewardship of the museum’s collection, which is one of the largest and most extensive collections of Native and Indigenous items in the world. Chavez Lamar led museum efforts to improve collection access and availability by advocating for and encouraging an increase in the number of collections online. She supported the development of a collection-information system module to record access, care and handling instructions provided by tribal, nation and community representatives. Chavez Lamar also established and prioritized partnerships and collaboration with Native nations and tribes and developed a loan program for tribal museum and cultural centers that provides training and technical assistance to enhance collections stewardship and reconnects descendant communities with the museum’s collections.

Chavez Lamar was the director of the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 2007 to 2014. From 2006 to 2007, she was the director of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. From 2000 to 2005, she was an associate curator at the National Museum of the American Indian and the lead curator for “Our Lives,” one of the inaugural exhibitions in the Washington, D.C., museum when it opened in 2004. She collaborated with eight Native communities on the exhibition.

Chavez Lamar was a presidential appointee to the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development in 2011. She was a governor’s appointee as a commissioner to the New Mexico Arts Commission from 2009 to 2012. She currently sits on the advisory group for Indigenous North America at the Princeton University Art Museum, and she is a member of the advisory board at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College.

Chavez Lamar is an enrolled member at San Felipe Pueblo, and her ancestry also includes Hopi, Tewa and Navajo on the maternal side of her family. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado College in studio art, a master’s degree in American Indian studies from UCLA and a doctorate in American studies from the University of New Mexico. She also received an honorary doctorate from Colorado College for her contributions to the museum field.

9:30am > The Smithsonian and America 250

In 2026, the United States of America turns 250 years old, and the Smithsonian Institution is uniquely positioned to bring together communities across the country to focus on Our Shared Future.  This is our chance to celebrate the United States and the Smithsonian's place in it—while commemorating and contemplating our intertwined and diverse history, culture, and legacy as we commit to our shared future together.

Lisa Sasaki is currently the deputy under secretary for special projects, where she provides leadership to the Institution as it plays a key role in America’s semiquincentennial celebration and in efforts that cut across organizational lines to maximize the Smithsonian’s impact, not only in Washington, DC, but also online and in communities across the country.

Previously, Sasaki was appointed the interim director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum in March 2021 and served in that role until 2023. She also served as the director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Sasaki has worked in the museum field for more than 25 years for organizations like the Oakland Museum of California, the Japanese American National Museum, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. 

She has  provided further service to the field as President of the Western Museums Association’s Board of Directors and as a member of AAM’s Facing Change working group, the Center for the Future of Museum’s Horizon Initiative steering committee, and the Advisory Council for the Council of Jewish American Museums.

Links
https://www.si.edu/250

10:00am > Together We Thrive: Exploring Partnerships for PreK-12 Impact in Rural America

Presenters will discuss how the Together We Thrive grant initiative has worked with educators and learners in rural communities over the past three years. Through two example projects—“Youth Leadership Team for the National Youth Summit” and “Youth Innovation in Rural America”—Together We Thrive awardees will present case studies of their experiences working in rural communities, including what they have learned, what they still have to learn, and what they are excited to explore through new partnerships and opportunities.

Featured Project: Youth Leadership Team for the National Youth Summit

The Youth Leadership Team (YLT) is an internship program for high school students to connect with peers around the country, develop museum program content, and explore museum career pathways as they help the National Museum of American History plan the National Youth Summit. The National Youth Summit is an annual virtual program that brings middle and high school students together with scholars, teachers, policy experts, and activists in a national conversation about important events in America’s past that have relevance to the nation’s present and future. Overall, this internship aims to provide insight into the inner workings and aspects of developing museum programs and support high school students with an interest in civic engagement.

Featured Project: Youth Innovation in Rural America (Kim Robledo-Diga, CHSDM, Project Lead)

The project team is currently investigating three approaches to scaling the Youth Innovation in Rural America program to ensure a sustainable model for partner communities and the Smithsonian. In its first two years—combining the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s design literacy curriculum framework with the civic engagement expertise and network of the Museum on Main Street initiative of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service | Smithsonian Affiliations—the Youth Innovation in Rural America program equipped middle and high school students and their teachers with tools and support to explore and implement innovative design responses to community challenges. To shape a model that broadens and deepens the program’s impact, the current planning effort will surface key lessons from the pilot years; identify tools, resources and support partners require to continue the program in their communities; define criteria for successful partnerships; and understand the Smithsonian's role in maintaining long-term partnerships. They are working with Gateway Regional Art Center and Kentucky Humanities in Kentucky; the Raven Hill Discovery Center in Michigan; Nampa Library and Boise State University in Idaho; and the Cheyenne River Youth Project and South Dakota Humanities in South Dakota.   

Karen Garrett is the Senior Program Officer for the Smithsonian Institution’s Office of the Under Secretary for Education. She is a key advisor to the Under Secretary for Education and oversees the financial and administrative operations for the office. Karen also oversees the competitive distribution of resources, which includes an in-house grants initiative providing resources and support to advance Smithsonian education goals and objectives and activating the Smithsonian’s PreK-12 strategy to reach every classroom in the nation. Karen has worked in philanthropy and supported cultural organizations since 2000. She has a BFA in dance from Marymount Manhattan College and a Masters of Arts in Arts Administration from Goucher College.

Colleen Popson is grants manager in the Smithsonian’s Office of the Under Secretary for Education (OUSE). She oversees and manages the Together We Thrive grants initiative, which supports Smithsonian educators’ pan-institutional efforts to expand access to SI education resources and approaches to help transform PreK-12 learning nationwide. Prior to her role at OUSE, Colleen was experience design manager at the National Museum of Natural History, where she worked with teams to build and deploy a experience design practice, using the museum as a lab to explore and test approaches for deepening collections-based science engagement and inquiry for both onsite and online visitors. A former field archaeologist and editor for Archaeology magazine, Colleen also specialized in anthropology education at the museum. She earned a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Oregon, an M.A. in anthropology from the University at Albany, and an M.L.I.S. with a focus in School Library Media from the Catholic University of America.

Megan Linehan is an Education Specialist at the National Museum of American History. She manages teen programs, including the museum's Youth Leadership Team and the National Youth Summit, and develops civics-focused resources for a PK-12 audience.

10:30am > Design Time

Our hope is that you have a much deeper understanding of some of the programs and experise that the Smithsonian can bring to address the five priorities we identified from the Rural Needs Sensing report. With this inspiration, we are interested in collaborating with you to serve your rural community and constituency.

11:30pm > Project Pitch

Each community representative(s) will be invited to share their initial concepts of a community-based project that they might create in collaboration with the Smithsonian.  We aren't asking for a commitment; we are interested in imagination. Each of you will receive a more comprehensive invitation to work with us to design next steps in your community.