Our Zany Visionary

Suzanne Wright with her award and in a group with other NAEA award winners.

Suzanne Wright with her award and in a group with other award winners. Photos: Rachel Goldberg

I’m currently in Fort Worth, Texas at the National Art Education Association (NAEA) annual conference and today I had the honor of presenting my boss–Suzanne Wright, Director of Education–with the NAEA 2013 Eastern Region Museum Educator of the Year award. This was a well deserved and hard-earned award for Suzanne, who has dedicated her entire (over 20 year) museum career to the Phillips! Under Suzanne’s leadership, our education department has produced award winning and nationally recognized programs and resources such as the Jacob Lawrence and The Migration Series teaching kit, and the emerging Prism of Arts Integration teaching framework. Suzanne has also played a key role in reinvigorating and re-establishing the local DC chapter of NAEA–AEDC. A few words that her colleagues and I used to describe her at the award ceremony today are thoughtful/reflective, passionate, visionary, zany, savvy, human, advocate, persistent, insightful, driven, determined, a bold leader with plentiful laughter, and a true leader. We all also really appreciate the seemingly never ending supply of Girl Scout cookies.

Rachel Goldberg, Manager of School, Outreach, and Family Programs

One thought on “Our Zany Visionary

Leave a Reply