backstory: Essential Workers
One of the loveliest partnerships we have on campus is with the Purchase College Children’s Center, and recently we completed a project in which the kids at the Center made big, beautiful signs for the front of our building thanking essential workers. The signs are really special, as are those kids, and as are our essential workers.
According to the Center’s Administrative Director, Penny Rose, “The children at the Children’s Center enjoyed working together using different art supplies to create the thank you posters for all the essential workers on campus that help keep them safe.”
The federal government defines “essential workers” as those who conduct a range of operations and services that are typically essential to continue critical infrastructure operations. Some of that work can be carried out remotely, but most of it cannot. At Purchase College, we have a wide range of essential workers whose work must be carried out on the campus, most days. These are the people who prepare food for the students, clean the buildings in which our face-to-face staff and faculty work, and so much more.
I am considered essential, but my particular work in assuring that the critical infrastructure operations of the museum are continued does not require me to be on-site, just now, very often. I have four people on staff, however—Head of Museum Preparedness Sanjeev Avasthi, Chief Preparator David Bogosian, Director of Digital Initiatives and Curator of New Media Jacqueline Shilkoff, and Registrar Patricia Magnani—who do come into the museum daily or several times a week to check the climate, the security, and the collection that we hold in trust for you.
The work that they do in these areas constitute the operations that are essential to continue our critical infrastructure operation. I am grateful to my entire staff for their dedication and good humor over the last eight months, but I am especially grateful to these four museum leaders for weathering the ups and downs, and backs and forths of keeping the museum and its holdings safe and secure.
Thank you Sanjeev, David, Jacqueline, and Pat for all you have done and all that you do for all of us.
The federal government defines “essential workers” as those who conduct a range of operations and services that are typically essential to continue critical infrastructure operations. Some of that work can be carried out remotely, but most of it cannot. At Purchase College, we have a wide range of essential workers whose work must be carried out on the campus, most days. These are the people who prepare food for the students, clean the buildings in which our face-to-face staff and faculty work, and so much more.
I am considered essential, but my particular work in assuring that the critical infrastructure operations of the museum are continued does not require me to be on-site, just now, very often. I have four people on staff, however—Head of Museum Preparedness Sanjeev Avasthi, Chief Preparator David Bogosian, Director of Digital Initiatives and Curator of New Media Jacqueline Shilkoff, and Registrar Patricia Magnani—who do come into the museum daily or several times a week to check the climate, the security, and the collection that we hold in trust for you.
The work that they do in these areas constitute the operations that are essential to continue our critical infrastructure operation. I am grateful to my entire staff for their dedication and good humor over the last eight months, but I am especially grateful to these four museum leaders for weathering the ups and downs, and backs and forths of keeping the museum and its holdings safe and secure.
Thank you Sanjeev, David, Jacqueline, and Pat for all you have done and all that you do for all of us.
Tracy Fitzpatrick
Director
Neuberger Museum of Art
Find me on Twitter @tracyfitzart
