As the director and CEO of the Newark Museum of Art, Linda Harrison has taken on a major role: both to develop and communicate the vision of the museum and to strengthen and expand its ties to the greater Newark community, a vibrant urban city and the most populous in the state of New Jersey.
“At the Newark Museum of Art, our five-year plan calls for major transformation at this 114-year-old institution,” Harrison tells Grazia USA. “In the next two years, we are aggressively working towards the launch of Museum Parc, a multi-use redevelopment project that not only includes outdoor art pavilions and a glass house, but also the development of 250 residential units, 20 percent of which will be affordable housing.”
This project, Harrison explains, “will not only transform the area of downtown Newark where the museum is – it’s going to change the entire city. People will be able to live, work and grow in this city around Museum Park.”
Harrison certainly has the pedigree and the chops to get the job done, after a long and esteemed career working in corporate America. “I got my start in Chicago working for Eastman Kodak Company and that’s where I learned how to become an entrepreneur within a very corporate structure,” says Harrison, who rose through the ranks within the company’s management program. “I thought I had made it when I was promoted to senior vice president at Eastman Kodak and I was running a $300 million division. I got the corner office, and I was the big boss. But then I started to think, ‘What else is there to do?’”
As it turns out, a lot. Harrison stepped away from a “safe corporate career” and moved to the world of nonprofit and cultural institutions. After a revolving door of failed leaders, Harrison became the executive director of the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. “I used my skills to turn the museum around and establish it as a profitable and culturally valid institution that was valued and cherished in San Francisco, a city with a global reputation for excellence in arts and culture,” Harrison says.
Since being appointed as the director and CEO of the Newark Museum in 2019, Harrison—the first women of color to hold this position in the museum’s history—has made it her mission to create space for everyone while unifying the Newark community through art and other programming. “Soon after I arrived at the Newark Museum of Art, I instituted a process called Design Thinking, which is an iterative method that encourages collaboration between designers and their colleagues,” explains Harrison.
“It’s a process that I believed in and I wanted not just our executive team to be trained in it, I wanted our whole team to participate in it. It takes abstract concepts from idea to execution. It also brings diverse voices and opinions to the table and ultimately helps us come to consensus around the best approach for the museum. Over the last five years, I’ve seen this process empower our entire staff from the ground up and it’s helped us bring our biggest ideas to life.
