Jennifer Scott

Jennifer Scott — Photo: Jenny Fontaine

Jennifer Scott is an anthropologist, curator and public historian, whose work, for over 25 years, explores connections between museums, arts, place and social justice. As director and chief curator of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago, she leads the exhibitions, community engagement efforts and overall vision of the museum. Under her leadership, Hull-House addresses historical and contemporary issues of peace, incarceration, immigration, displacement, citizenship, race, gender, sexuality and social activism through a number of ground breaking exhibitions and programs both within and outside the museum’s walls. In 2018 Jane Addams Hull-House Museum was recognized with the Award for Excellence in Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice by the Association of Midwest Museums.

Previously, Scott served as the Vice Director and Director of Research at Weeksville Heritage Center, a museum and nationally significant historic site in Brooklyn, New York. There, she co-curated a number of public programs and exhibitions, including a multi-site history and public art exhibition:  Funk, God, Jazz, and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn in partnership with public art presenters, Creative Time (2014). Before Weeksville, Jennifer worked with the Place Matters Project for City Lore on the Lower East Side of New York City to research and document the historical and cultural significance of sites throughout the five boroughs of New York for a city-wide, grass-roots census.

Scott is a Board Member for the National Association for Museum Exhibition (NAME) and for the Association of Midwest Museums (AAM). She currently serves as faculty in the graduate program of Museum and Exhibition Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and for more than 16 years, has taught at The New School for Public Engagement and Parsons School of Art and Design in New York.

Subject areas:

Public history
Arts and culture
Memory and place
Spatial justice
Community engagement
Women and gender issues
Innovative strategies for museums