Dana Hand Evans Admitted into Renowned Museum Leadership Institute 

Winchester, VA 05/24/12…Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) Executive Director Dana Hand Evans will join 34 museum leaders from across the United States and around the world to participate in the Getty Leadership Institute’s renowned Museum Leadership Institute (MLI). The program will take place at Claremont Graduate University in California from June 2 to 22, 2012.

Now in its 34th year, the MLI program is the world’s foremost professional development program for senior museum executives, and acceptance into it is highly competitive. The MLI’s reputation for excellence is witnessed through the geographic diversity of the museums represented and the caliber of the program’s participants, who are selected based on their ability to influence policy and effect change at their organizations. 

According to MSV Board President John Lathrop, the timing of Evans’s attendance at this summer’s program is ideal for the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, which currently is developing a new strategic plan to direct its future growth. The cutting-edge ideas to which Evans will be exposed at the leadership institute, says Lathrop, will be of great value to this process. 

Since 1979 more than 1,100 museum professionals from the United States and 30 additional countries have attended the Museum Leadership Institute, which is generously supported by the Getty Foundation. This year’s participants include museum directors, curators, and assistant directors, as well as professionals who lead museum education, exhibitions, collections, research, development, and public programming initiatives. 

This year’s MLI group includes senior leaders from a wide variety of museums, including the Toledo Museum of Art; the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; the DuSable Museum of African/American History; the Royal Academy of Arts in London; the National Museum of Australia; the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada; the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in Denmark; the Hong Kong Science Museum; the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Austria; the Museo del Oro of Banco de la República in Columbia; and the State Museum of Ethnology in Germany. Additionally, this year’s MLI class features several university museums. 

MLI faculty comes from the top ranks of educational institutions, including the University of Southern California, the Center for Creative Leadership, the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University, and the Claremont Graduate University’s Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. Course work—covering strategic thinking and organizational behavior and alignment—addresses topics such as building public understanding, leading change, and motivating high performance. Discussions are directed by case studies and exercises that combine current events and trends with academic theory and best practices. 

Dana Hand Evans began serving as the director of Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in February 2011. Prior to that, she was the executive director of The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Virginia (NSCDA-VA) and the Wilton House Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Evans graduated from La Salle University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in art history, painting, and printmaking, and she received a Master of Arts degree in art history/historical studies and a Masters of Public Administration degree from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond. She also earned a certificate in non-profit management from VCU. 

The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley is located at 901 Amherst Street in Winchester, Virginia. The MSV complex—which includes galleries, the Glen Burnie Historic House, and six acres of gardens—is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. The Museum galleries are open year-round; the Glen Burnie Historic House and surrounding gardens are open April through October; nearby Rose Hill, also part of the MSV, is open from 1 to 4 p.m. on the first and second Tuesday and the third Saturday of the months April through October for battlefield tours. Admission—which includes access to the gardens and the galleries—is $10 or $8 for seniors and youth ages 13 to 18. Museum admission is always free to youth ages 12 and under and to MSV Members, and it is free to all every Wednesday from 10 a.m. until noon. The Glen Burnie Historic House is now closed until 2014 for a comprehensive preservation project. Additional information is available atwww.ShenandoahMuseum.org or by calling 540-662-1473, ext. 235 –END– 

Julie B. Armel 
540-662-1473, ext. 225 
armel@shenandoahmuseum.org