BOSTON, MASS.- Michelle Grohe was recently named the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Esther Stiles Eastman Curator of Education. She was previously the Museum’s Associate and Interim Curator of Education.

Michelle began at the Gardner in 2005 as Director of School & Teacher Programs, managing and refining the longstanding School Partnership Program and related evaluation measuring impact on participating students. She moved into the role of Assistant Curator of Education & School Programs in 2015, where she helped redesign the museum’s K-12 School Partnership Program into Thinking Through Art, an intensive professional development program currently serving 54 Boston public teachers that enables the Gardner to reach more than 2000 students each academic year.

Later, in her dual role as the Associate and Interim Curator of Education, she led the Gardner’s Visitor Experience initiatives and related evaluation, working with cross-departmental teams to help the Gardner understand its visitors and impact, both programmatically and experientially. As the Gardner continues to innovate in its visitor-facing initiatives, including updated multi-lingual mobile audio guides and redesigned website, Grohe ensures the Gardner maintains a holistic and integrated approach to our digital, human and physical offer, especially for first-time visitors.

In her new role as Curator of Education, she provides leadership for education activities and initiatives that ensure diverse audiences engage with the Museum, its collection, and exhibitions. Her work includes overseeing the elementary through higher education programs for teachers and students; interpretive resources for general visitors; studio experiences and artist-led artmaking programs; community partnerships and programs; diversity and inclusion initiatives; and visitor experience enhancement projects.

As the Museum moves to broaden its audiences to match the diverse, young local population, Grohe will oversee the Museum’s Public Programs department as it builds compelling community events that fuse interpretive, gallery, and performance-based programming. Under Grohe’s leadership, the Gardner’s Thursday evening events will continue to build bridges to the collection while simultaneously engaging new audiences.

She also co-leads the Gardner’s institution-wide Diversity and Inclusion initiatives, including implicit bias training, the Gardner Ambassadors paid internship for college students program, as well as integrating dialogue training into exhibition and program planning.

Michelle has previously held education positions at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, and the Montclair Art Museum. She studied studio art at Millkin University (B.F.A.) and art + design education for museums at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD, M.A.). In addition to having served on the board of the National Art Education Association as the Museum Education Division Director, she is also a frequent presenter at local and national conferences, and was named Massachusetts Art Education Association’s Art Museum Educator of the year, 2010. Grohe currently lives in Watertown, MA.