NEW HAVEN, CT.- Jessica Sack, the senior museum educator and coordinator of teacher services at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, has been appointed the Jan and Frederick Mayer Associate Curator for Public Education at the Yale University Art Gallery. She will be responsible for developing and implementing the museum’s educational programs for kindergarten through 12th grade and, working with the curator of academic initiatives, integrating Yale undergraduates into an active and engaging educational outreach program to New Haven and the region. She assumed the position on October 11, 2004.

Since 1999, when she joined the staff of the Brooklyn Museum, Ms. Sack has worked on all aspects of public education, teaching elementary and high school classes, developing materials that interpret the museum’s wide-ranging collection for school and family visitors, and leading professional development teacher workshops. She successfully coordinated and implemented Brooklyn’s extensive Teacher Leadership Program that introduces ways of connecting classroom teaching to museum collections, as well as the Weekend Teacher Workshop Series, and the Summer Teacher Institute. Her work with the directors of the American Social History Project and the Brooklyn Museum’s curatorial staff resulted in the well-received teacher resource, Picturing a Nation: Teaching with American Art and Material Culture.

Before going to Brooklyn, Ms. Sack worked at Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum as an educator and co-curator. Earlier, she worked in the education department of the Elvehjem Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Throughout her career Ms. Sack has maintained an active interest in music as a violin teacher and a performer in the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra.

A 1996 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Ms. Sack holds a M. Phil. in Ethnology and Museum Ethnology from Oxford University, England, and a M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University.

“We are delighted that Jessica Stack is bringing her energy and strong grasp of museum education issues to New Haven,” said Anna Hammond, Deputy Director for Programs and External Affairs. “Jessica's passionate belief that it is through long-term relationships with schools that museums can best teach children and their families to develop lifelong relationships with works of art and the institutions that house them makes her the perfect addition to our team. Her experience in working with diverse audiences in Brooklyn as well as in university museums will be invaluable at the Yale Art Gallery where we welcome and actively work with both the academic and civic communities.”