Grace Friary, photos by Ben Barnhart

It’s a bright autumn day in Salem, Massachusetts, and thousands of tourists flood the streets. They come from around the world, arriving by car, train, bus, and boat, filling restaurants, shops, galleries, and museums in this early 17th-century seaside community. Many visitors come for Salem’s Witch Trial attractions some 300-odd years after the fact, but they find much more. Walking tours take in McIntire Historic District houses and public buildings that are some of New England’s architectural gems. On Derby Wharf the reproductionof the 1797 Friendship moors against brisk Atlantic wind and surf as visitors explore the city where native sons Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Parker Brothers of Monopoly fame lived and worked.

By noon on an average Saturday nearly 200 visitors of all ages have ventured the few blocks from the breakwaters to the undisputed center of Salem’s cultural universe, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM). In a spectacular three-story atrium, some enjoy a leisurely lunch while others walk between galleries featuring exhibitions as diverse as masterworks of origami and the exquisite carving of 19th-century Salem architect Samuel McIntire.

Six UMass Amherst alumni serve on a professional staff of nearly 300 curators, educators, and administrators responsible for maintaining the museum’s international reputation as one of the most popular destinations in New England. Recently renovated and expanded, the museum both crowns and embodies the region’s amalgam of history, culture, and art.
Many of the museum’s objects were acquired during Salem’s grand era of acquisition, when masters of sailing ships—scions of New England’s founding families—brought back cultural and artistic treasures from their round-the-world voyages. Through gift or bequest, artifacts from every corner of the globe now form the core of the collections. Fittingly, the museum’s maritime holdings are substantial.

“Our collection tells Salem’s story, America’s story, the world’s story,” says Sam Scott ’93, associate curator of maritime arts and history. “We are the largest department at PEM and one of the finest in this country, along with Mystic Seaport and the Mariner’s Museum in Virginia.”

PEM is an acknowledged giant in the field of maritime art, with collections of art and artifacts that include a group of carved figureheads that once graced Salem’s sailing ships and 25,000 marine paintings, drawings, and prints. Scott is one of three curators who care for nearly 50,000 objects that relate to the sea. “Curators sit on the border between the public experience and the professional staff members in the so-called back of the house. It is through exhibitions that the groups come together,” says Scott. “As a curator I enjoy teaching through the medium of exhibitions—learning this way is leisurely and low-pressure for the public.” Scott’s specialty is highly marketable in the museum world, but, he says, “there is no place I would rather work than PEM.”

PEM is the oldest continually operating museum in the country as well as the nation’s fourth largest in regards to the size of its collection. In a new main building designed by award-winning architect Moshe Safdie, staff integrate, interpret, and exhibit extensive collections. Ever-changing exhibits of Asian, Native American, oceanic, and Early American decorative art educate and entertain visitors of all ages. In total, the museum encompasses 250,000 square feet when its 24 historic houses in Salem are included.

With the recent expansion, PEM now, more than ever, creates a holistic learning environment. In the new family-friendly Discovery Center—awarded a Ten Best Award by Parents magazine—children work in clay, creating copies of Samuel McIntire’s decorative carvings, or fashion colorful origami birds and boats. Elsewhere on the museum’s campus, outside the entrance to the Yin Yu Tang House, a docent announces the next tour. This dwelling was home to eight generations of the Huang family in Shanghai, from 1800 to 1982. It was carefully reconstructed on the grounds at PEM and opened to the public in 2003.

Learning happens wherever objects and visitors intersect, and a brigade of volunteers provides the important link. “It’s store personnel, the guards, and those who guide tourists through the museum who are the face of this place,” says Ellen Soares ’78. “These are the people who really are the museum for the public.”

Soares calls herself the den mother of docents. She supervises nearly 125 museum volunteers. A typical day for her might include scheduling interpretive training for a new exhibition or booking lecturers for docent enrichment—all to enhance the museum experience for visitors. Soares handpicks docents to accompany the special-interest tours that are a vital component of the museum’s educational mission.

Being a PEM docent is a prized position for North Shore residents. “Our volunteers are very proud of working here,” says Soares. “Many have been with us for 15 years or more.” She hires about 20 new docents a year, most locally (although some come from as far away as Concord and Lexington), and organizes social events to help the group bond.

Soares remembers visiting PEM as a child during summers spent in nearby Swampscott, Massachusetts. “I was always attracted to this place, which was then the Peabody Museum. I loved the old houses in Salem. I really thought I wanted to work here,” she says, “and now I do.”

Part of PEM’s mission is engaging the Ellen Soares of tomorrow. Melissa Kershaw ’92, manager of student programs, helps the collections tell their stories to the museum’s youngest visitors. Working with curators, she develops K-12 curricula that link hands-on activities with exhibition themes and resources. For instance, fifth-graders might learn origami in the Discovery Center before stepping into the Asian art galleries and embarking on a treasure hunt to discover the difference between a hand scroll, a hanging scroll, and a storyteller’s scroll, or to find out who in Japanese society would have used a palanquin (see page 11). Kershaw regularly coordinates with educators in 57 school districts in Massachusetts and produces a comprehensive program catalogue twice a year.

“It was in a museum that I first realized that art and cultural objects have compelling stories to tell,” says Kershaw. She was eight years old when her parents took her and her brother to an exhibition of art from Pompeii at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. “A light bulb went on in my head,” she says. “It was my first personal response to art, one that later inspired me to study anthropology with a mind to pursuing a career in archaeology.”
Which is just what she did, at UMass Amherst. After graduation, she worked at Colonial Williamsburg for a year, then returned home to the North Shore and began volunteering at PEM, first in the Native American collection’s storage facility and later as a historic interpreter for middle-schoolers. This eventually led to her full-time post.

For Kershaw, skills integral to archaeology and anthropology—observation and objectivity—are the same ones needed for museum education. They are key to “unearthing the many meanings of art, considering the multiple voices represented by objects, being mindful of the diverse cultural backgrounds and real-life experiences of our visitors, and identifying and utilizing a multiplicity of teaching strategies,” says Kershaw. “These skills are particularly effective when paired with PEM’s dynamic collections and its art and culture paradigm, enabling visitors to have a multifaceted experience of art.”

This perspective infuses Kershaw’s master’s work in museum studies at Harvard University Extension School, where she researches best practices for teaching adult ESOL students in the museum setting. Ultimately, she hopes that her work at PEM will open doors for children, “perhaps,” says Kershaw, “even provide some of our young visitors with deeply personal, life-changing experiences of their own.”

Jerry Marsella ’86 credits UMass Amherst Professor of Japanese, Jean Moore with launching him towards his dream job in PEM’s department of Japanese art. Marsella, who is fluent in Japanese, manages the department’s collections, assists in the creation of exhibitions, and works with visiting research scholars.

“I took Japanese as an undergraduate on a whim when there was just a handful of us studying the language,” says Marsella. He went abroad for his senior year in Japan and earned a master’s in Asian art history at the University of Kansas. “After total immersion in Japanese art and culture, I decided working in a museum gave me an opportunity to teach but in a nontraditional way.”

Marsella, an artist and designer in his own right (see page 17), grew up in nearby Beverly; he calls PEM his “hometown museum.” He joined the staff in 2002, when the department was being formed around the collection bequeathed by Edward Sylvester Morse, director of the-then Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology from 1880-1914. “Working with the Morse Collection of Japanese Art has been a great privilege. It is truly a time capsule of Japanese culture and can be used to educate the public in many creative ways.”

Marsella uses his language skills on the job, serving sometimes as a translator for visitors from Salem’s sister city, Ota, Japan, or assisting non-English-speaking scholars who visit the museum. His passion for Japanese culture and society extends to his volunteer work tutoring a local youth studying the language. “As Professor Moore mentored me, I now mentor my student,” says Marsella.

“The tables have turned in my life and I love it.”

Pete Doran ’64, is the resident memory for PEM’s staff. The museum’s assistant comptroller and longest-serving staff member, Doran arrived in 1973 and had a front-row seat to witness the growth of the Peabody Museum and the Essex Institute, and then their merger in 1992. “I never dreamed I would stay in the job for 35 years,” he says, but PEM won his heart. “I am a business person who loves and appreciates museums.”

Doran’s interaction with what he calls “the museum side of the museum” is his role handling the accounting end of acquisitions. “Objects are the soul of a museum, and I learn about them by authorizing their purchase,” says Doran. At UMass Amherst, he earned a business degree and is grateful that he took a few art history courses, too. A native of Lexington, Doran grew up steeped in history. “Those experiences have helped me appreciate the importance of PEM,” Doran says.

“We are very different from most art museums,” says Dan Monroe, PEM’s executive director and chief executive officer. “We are not just committed to enhancing the experience of visitors of all ages; we actually do.”

The reason the museum delivers on such a bold commitment, Monroe says, is change. “It is very hard to bring about change, and what we have achieved in the last several years could not have happened without an enormous amount of it.” Upon his arrival from Oregon’s Portland Art Museum in 1992, Monroe and the museum’s board of trustees began the enormous job of merging two of New England’s most venerable institutions—the Peabody Museum (founded in 1799) and the Essex Institute (opened in 1821). The merger’s goals were lofty: to create under one roof a museum where visitors of all ages could learn about the multicultural heritage of Salem from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Once the two institutions were merged, the museum launched an ambitious $200 million capital campaign to turn a dream into reality.

For Merry Glosband ’68, working at PEM for the past 25 years has allowed her to indulge her love of teaching and follow her interests in a wide variety of arts traditions. Over the years she has worked directly with curators, helped prepare exhibitions, and teamed with administrators on a variety of projects. Since 2001, Glosband has served as assistant director of the museum’s ECHO Project—Education through Cultural and Historical Organizations.

ECHO is a major federally funded educational and cultural enrichment initiative serving hundreds of thousands of Native Americans in Alaska, Hawaii, and Massachusetts. The Peabody Essex Museum houses the oldest collection of Native American art in this hemisphere, on view to the public since the museum’s founding in 1799. ECHO offers underserved populations access to this rich cultural heritage.

Dan Elias, former host of PBS’s popular Antiques Roadshow, directs PEM’s ECHO programs. Together he and Glosband showcase the collection by integrating it with creative programming.

“One of the parts of my job that I enjoy most is managing our annual storytelling festival,” says Glosband. She coordinates performances by Native American storytellers at the museum and in local schools. “Visitors and students in our region love these programs,” she says. “Telling stories is such a wonderful way to connect to people. Museums need to think a lot about who they impact and look at what they are offering through the eyes and ears of their audiences.”

In her work, Glosband brings Native American artists, dancers, and writers to PEM as well as to schoolchildren in Salem and along the North Shore. She attends and presents at conferences in Alaska, Hawaii, and in the Commonwealth to keep current with ECHO initiatives. When asked why, after a quarter decade, she refers to her work at PEM as continually in progress, she quotes Native American artist Dan V. Lomahaftewa: “When I am asked the question of how long it takes me to do a piece of art or a painting, I usually will answer ‘all of my life.’”

---

A Passion for Paper

There is paper—the daily reams of memos and spreadsheets—and then there is paper: thick handmade sheets with exotic fi bers, colors, and textures. It’s the second kind that inspires Jerry Marsella ’86 to make paper satchels.

Some start out as sketches; others evolve from encountering a certain paper and knowing right then what it should become. Marsella determines size, shape, and thickness, then sets to work. He has learned that all other details are best left to coalesce in his head and in his hands as he works.

Marsella’s process changes from piece to piece, but each satchel is built entirely of paper, save the handle and lid-fastener. Structural elements are joined through hand-stitching, usually using paper cord. Numerous layers go into each one. From beginning to end, Marsella is mindful of what he wants visible on a finished piece, and what should be concealed.

“Interacting with handmade paper can be a sort of sensual experience,” says Marsella. “It has a presence to me, and induces something very real, very compelling and fulfilling, but hard to describe. When I’m working with ‘good’ paper, my mind, hands, and heart are all engaged, and nothing else really matters.”

Marsella always has an eye out for interesting raw materials; one room in his house is half filled with papers he has collected for possible use.

“As I work, the process and the paper can take things in directions I never imagined,” says Marsella, “resulting in a better fi nished piece than I fi rst conceived.”

Talking about the origin of his work, Marsella remembers the appeal hand-pulled papers had for him when he lived in Japan some years ago. He was inspired to find ways to use and enjoy paper in his everyday life. After he moved back to the United States in 1993, Marsella began creating paper satchels with the idea that frequent contact with a material that spoke to him would be a fulfilling experience. He was pleasantly surprised when admirers of his early pieces told him they saw something Japanese in them.

“I’ve used them to carry everything from a laptop to books, papers, and various other ‘stuff,’ including lunch,” he says.

Marsella’s guiding principle is that his creations should straddle the line between artfulness and utility. They’ve proven themselves able to carry just about anything that fits inside without compromise to their form, even in light rain, yet they also celebrate form and texture and carry a sense of their “paperness.” Marsella, fluent in Japanese, explains that as an object of daily use, one of his pieces would be called kaban—”bag” in Japan. He hopes some might eventually develop an aura seen in mingei, Japanese folk craft: a sense of character that comes from a blend of aesthetics, practicality, and wear from years of use.

“Some owners of pieces I’ve made have told me they view the satchels as art,” says Marsella. “They admire them as objects but don’t explore their potential. While an interesting aesthetic adds something important to life, I feel it should complement rather than impede utility,” says Marsella. “These are ultimately made to be used.”

Marsella has made some paper kaban on commission, and others just to see how they would come out. Some, which he owns personally, recently returned from an exhibition that traveled the United States spotlighting art whose primary medium is paper.

“If one of these were to become part of someone’s life and gradually build the character that only time and continued personal use can bring out, like you see in an old doctor’s bag or a favorite pair of broken-in jeans,” explains Marsella, “that would mean absolute success to me.”