Events Calendar

This event has been canceled. We are working to find a new time when Pamela Franks can come to campus.

Academic museums are uniquely positioned to act as catalysts in higher education, to serve as bridges between campuses and communities, and to enhance the future of museums. How can we unlock the particular potential of campus museums in our evolving world? Focusing on the early planning of a new building for the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) as a case study, this talk explores how academic art museums offer rich possibilities for collaborative and responsive approaches to museum practice and museum architecture.

Pamela Franks is the Class of 1956 director of the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). She is inspired by a lifelong belief in the transformative power of art museums for individuals, institutions, and society. Franks has devoted her career to unlocking the potential of college and university art museums—working with students, collaborating with artists, fostering inclusive public and academic engagement, and imagining the future of museum experiences.

Prior to her appointment in 2018, Franks served as senior deputy director and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG), where she worked for fourteen years. She previously worked at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas during the period of its construction and opening. A highlight of Franks’s time at Yale was her leadership role in the gallery’s renovation and expansion project. Now she is envisioning the future of WCMA as the museum’s centennial year approaches, in concert with making strategic plans for integrating the arts across the Williams College campus. She holds a PhD in art history from the University of Texas at Austin and is a graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute and the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program.

If you are not able to attend in person, join us on the event live stream: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/97514415646