Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, the incoming executive director and chief executive of the Peabody Essex Museum Peabody Essex Museum/Photo: Alex Paul
Four months after the abrupt departure of its executive director and chief executive, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts announced today that it had appointed Lynda Roscoe Hartigan of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto to succeed him. She will be the first woman to lead PEM, and served there as chief curator and then deputy director until last year.
Hartigan, who assumes the posts on 23 August, is currently the deputy director for collections and research and the chief innovation offer at the Royal Ontario Museum. She is a leading expert on Joseph Cornell and specialises more generally in American art, especially modern, folk and Black artists, PEM says. The museum cited her “progressive vision” for the institution, the oldest continuously operating museum in the US.