Selected Biographies
Janet Marstine - Director, Institute of Museum Ethics
Janet Marstine is founder and Director of the Institute of Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University. In 2007 her application for the Institute of Museum Ethics was one of ten projects awarded a three-year Twenty First Century Museum Professionals Grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums.
Dr. Marstine is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Music at Seton Hall where she teaches undergraduate art history and graduate museum studies courses. Marstine’s research areas include museum ethics; institutional critique; exhibitionary practice; and feminist theory. Marstine is the editor of New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2005) for which she also co-wrote an article with Lyndel King on institutional critique in the university museum. In October 2007 she published “What a Mess! Claiming a Space for Undergraduate Student Experimentation in the University Museum” in Museum Management and Curatorship.
Marstine has chaired sessions at the American Association of Museums (2007) and College Art Association (2001) conferences and will chair a session on “New Thoughts on Teaching Museum Ethics” at the 2009 CAA conference. She has presented papers at the International Council of Museums University Museums and Collections Conference (2006), the Skidmore College Conference on the College Museum (2006), and the New Museums, New Museology Conference, Savannah College of Art and Design (2008). She has experience in freelance curating and in 2002 shared an NEH Challenge America Grant to curate the exhibition What a Doll!
Dr. Marstine received her Ph.D. in Art History in 1993 from the University of Pittsburgh. In 1989 she received a predoctoral fellowship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She held internships at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Lindsay LaPrad - Graduate Assistant
Lindsay LaPrad is the Graduate Assistant at the Institute of Museum Ethics. She assists Director Janet Marstine with IME web portal development and content maintenance, IME events, and administrative tasks. She entered Seton Hall’s M.A. program in Museum Professions in the fall of 2008, and expects to graduate in spring 2010.
Research on museums and their roles in communities piqued her interest in museum ethics. Lindsay received B.A. in Art History and Museum Studies at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in American Art History, publish, as well as establish a career working in art museums.