Though the Mead Museum is a a good bit smaller than PEM, Shah says he’s looking forward to using that smaller scale to develop close ties to staff, students and faculty, as well as to the Valley as a whole. He’s felt particularly drawn to his role as director of PEM’s education and civic engagement programs, which he began heading in 2020. “I liked some of that work, but I felt there was something more I could do … I started my Ph.D. “I began wondering, how can I make better use of my education and interest in art than selling objects to wealthy people?” he said. In his 20s and early 30s, he was an art dealer and consultant, at one point running his own gallery, with branches in New York and Berkeley, California (he also earned a master’s degree in East-West psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco). Shah, who began working at PEM in 2018 as the curator of the museum’s South Asian art collection - one of the largest such collections in the country - is relatively new to museum work. “It’s not so much the preciousness of a particular object but what kind of stories and conversations you can generate about it.” “That’s how you build more cross-cultural understanding and awareness,” Shah said. He’ll work to boost student engagement in a number of capacities, from interns to docents to scholars.Īs he sees it, the challenge is to use the Mead’s collection to “create conversations” with students on how those objects may relate to their own lives, or how they shed light on histories, cultures and experiences completely different than their own.
“When I learned about that, particularly the emphasis on economic diversity, I thought, ‘This is a place where I can really feel a part of things,’” he said.Īnd Shah is also excited about the opportunities he’ll have to work with students and faculty at the Mead, as he’ll be charged with making the museum’s collection accessible to both groups in different ways, such as having faculty members draw on Mead resources when developing their curriculums.
students at Amherst now identify as students of color. According to the college, about 49% of U.S. In a recent phone call, Shah said part of the appeal of coming to Amherst stems from the significant effort the college has made in the past two decades to bring students of color, and especially students of lesser economic means, to campus. Michael Kunichika, who directs the Amherst Center for Russian Culture and also teaches Russian at the college, has served as the Mead’s interim director since Little’s departure. Shah, who received a bachelor’s degree in art history from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate in art history from Columbia University, takes over the position after former Mead Director David Little left about a year ago to direct the International Center of Photography in New York City. Now Shah, who grew up in suburban Chicago, will look to build some connections in the Valley and at Amherst College in particular: He’s been appointed the new director of the school’s Mead Art Museum. “But in Salem, you have this sense of deep roots … there are people here who can trace their families back over 350 years.” “My sense of identity has not really been connected to a particular location or region, because I’ve lived all over,” he said. It’s in New England that he’s first experienced a real sense of place, says Shah, the curator and director of education and civic engagement at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem.
Shah has lived, worked and traveled in a wide range of places over the years: Chicago, Baltimore and San Francisco New York and London India, France and Belgium and most recently, New England.
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