2025 Candidates Forum

Don’t miss this opportunity to participate in AAMG’s democratic process and help build the future of academic museums and galleries.

Candidates on the voting block:
Jessica Kinsey, Secretary (Director, Southern Utah Museum of Art)
Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye, VP of Programs (Director, Housatonic Museum of Art)
Virginia Howell, VP of Membership (Director, Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking)

Mark your calendar—and be part of the conversation – No need to register, just use the zoom link below to join in on May 12th!

Find the recording here:
https://vimeo.com/1084742186?share=copy
Password: 25Candidates

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Jessica Kinsey is the Executive Director for Southern Utah Museum of Art on the campus of Southern Utah University. She oversees long-range planning of all museum areas including collections management, exhibition design, learning and visitor experience, finance, and development. Mentorship of professional and student staff members is crucial to her role because of the organization’s desire to prepare the next generation of museum professionals to find success in their careers.

Jessica has received multiple awards for her efforts in community service including Southern Utah University’s award “Community Engaged Exemplar” (2019) which recognizes a staff member that shows leadership in advancing community engagement as a critical component within their higher education institution. She also received the “Forty Under 40” (2016) award from Oklahoma Magazine which honors exceptional individuals who have made a significant contribution to shaping the Oklahoma City landscape. Through redefining and improving business practices, advancing education and raising the bar for civic and artistic endeavors, Forty Under 40 honorees positively impact the greater Oklahoma City area.

Jessica has a Bachelor of Arts in Art History (2011) and a Master of Arts in Museum Studies (2014). She completed both degrees at University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye is the Director of the Housatonic Museum of Art (HMA) at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, CT. With a collection of over 7,000 artworks, the HMA is one of the most important community college art museums in the country. Prior to leading the HMA, she has worked at a variety of museums and organizations, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Southern California, and specializes in the afterlife of pre-Columbian art in modern and contemporary art. She participated in the Getty Leadership Institute NextGen program as well as the Smithsonian’s Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology, and taught courses in art history at Yale University and Manchester Community College.

She has co-curated several faculty- and student-led exhibitions, and was the curator of the exhibition, Small-Great Objects: Anni and Josef Albers in the Americas at the Yale University Art Gallery in 2017. Her publications and presentations reflect her deep engagement with pressing topics facing art history and museum education today. These include essays on oil portraits in shared academic spaces, panels on interdisciplinary cross-pollination between art and science, discussions of individual and institutional blind spots in museums, and research into recovering undervalued voices of laborers in archaeological field work.

Virginia Howell has been the director of the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking since 2019.
Prior to this position she served as the Education Curator for the museum for 7 years. Howell has a
Master’s Degree in History from the University of Mississippi, and a B.A. in History and American Studies
from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. She has been a museum educator for over twenty years: beginning
at Reynolda House, Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, NC. She then served as program
coordinator at the North Carolina State Capital, and ten years at Cape Fear Museum of History and
Science in Wilmington, North Carolina.

As Education Curator at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, she expanded programming
for school audiences and increased outreach opportunities to Georgia Tech students and faculty. In her
role as Director of the museum, she seeks to support the mission of the museum to “collect, preserve,
increase, and disseminate knowledge about papermaking—past, present, and future.” Current work
includes increasing accessibility of the 100,000 objects in the collection.
She is currently on the board of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries and is co-
representative for the Southeastern region. Howell is also active in SEMC and the Georgia Association of
Museums.