Today we’d like to introduce you to Donna Harris
Hi Donna, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I grew up on the east coast of Florida and had a career as a Health Educator with the Florida Department of Health. I was ready to get away from the heat and humidy of Florida so when my brother took position at Miami University and moved to Oxford I came up to visit Cincinnati. It had everything I wanted – walkability, a vibrant arts culture, and an affordable cost of living. I moved here not knowing a soul in Cincinnati and enjoyed early retirement for a while.
Deciding I wasn’t ready to give up working all together, I decided to look into working for a museum – a childhood dream. I got a certificate in Museum Studies from Northwestern and applied for a 2-year position with Americorp’s Ohio History Service Corps. I was placed at the Cincinnati Art Museum where I worked on evaluation and helped small museums in the region with things like strategic planning and volunteer management. I found that my skills as a Health Educator – grant writing, volunteer management, evaluation, and program development transferred really well to the museum field.
I was thrilled to be hired as the Director of Museum Administration for the Over-the-Rhine Museum in 2020. I’ve spend the last 4 years as the only full-time, paid staff, doing everything from writing grants, to running tours, to managing the social media. It is an honor to be part of a new emerging museum as it develops. Cincinnati is a great place to live and I am really enjoying Over-the-Rhine – walking to Findlay Market and Music Hall, eating at world class restaurants, and never having to prepare for a hurricane again!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Like many people Covid-19 was a huge challenge! I started with the Over-the-Rhine Museum about a month into the pandemic. I set up an office in my apartment thinking it would be temporary. The museum had to cancel our walking tour season that first year and manage everything via zoom. We had just purchased a building to house the museum and it sat vacant for another three years before we could really start the restorations it needed. We lost a lot of momentum in our programming and fundraising efforts, but we are now getting closer to realizing the goal of opening a brick and mortar museum celebrating all the stories Over-the-Rhine has to tell.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As the Director of Museum Administration for the Over-the-Rhine Museum I am responsible for all the day-to-day operations, I support grant applications and fundraising, events, and programming. The Board and I are dedicated to creating a new museum here in Over-the-Rhine that tells the stories of everyday people who lived in our building. Much like the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York we tell the stories of actual residents and connect them to the larger stories of our country.
Over-the-Rhine has seen waves of people from the early German and European immigrants to Appalachian migrants, and then African Americans displaced from the West End by urban renewal projects. It is changing very quickly these days and we believe it is important to document, preserve, and share the stories of the people who lived and worked in this neighborhood. Their stories of work, poverty, immigration, migration, family, religion, and more are both personal and universal. As the neighborhood changes and buildings are torn down or gutted their stories are being lost.
While we work on restoring our building at 3 West McMicken, we offer four community programs: Walking the Stories – a series of walking tours, Three Acts – a quarterly lecture program where we discuss a wide range of topics connected to Over-the-Rhine, storefront and traveling exhibitions, and Voices of Over-the Rhine where we record oral histories with people who lived or worked here. These programs allow us to share our research and the stories of Over-the-Rhine with hundreds of people each year. We are actively raising money to finish the interior of our museum building and hope to open our doors to the public in a couple of years.
To learn more you can go on our website at www.otrmuseum.org. Sign up for the newsletter (yes, that is also part of my job!) to stay up to date on our programs and building progress.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
What makes me happy is family, friends, and being able to use my mind. Cincinnati has been great for all three. Although I moved here not knowing anyone except my brother in Oxford, I used every skill I ever developed in community engagement work to build a large network of friends. I joined book clubs, I got on Meetup, I volunteered. I went back to work. I knew that moving to a new place could be isolating, so I made it a goal to build relationships and its paid off. I’m also happy that my daughter and sister followed me here and now live nearby. As for my mind – a new careeer in a field I always dreamed of working in and the availability of theater, music, and art all around me has made that easy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.otrmuseum.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/otrmuseum
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OTRmuseum/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmharris/
