Sam Boehm
Exhibition Coordinator
Sam Boehm earned his BFA from WVU's School of Art & Design and his MFA from the University of Delaware. His professional experience includes fine art framing, object handling and photography, cataloguing, gallery preparation, and office management in various roles, including auction houses, fine art galleries in New York City, as well as for his personal curatorial projects. As Exhibition Coordinator, Boehm's position serves both the Art Museum and also oversees the Mesaros Galleries in the Canady Creative Arts Center.
Robert Bridges
Curator
Between 2000 and 2015, Robert Bridges organized more than 80 exhibitions in the Mesaros Galleries at WVU’s College of Creative Arts, among them "Ceramic Art from the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute" and two national exhibitions featuring the work of American modernist Blanche Lazzell. Since the opening of the Art Museum in 2015, his curatorial projects have included "Shepard Fairey: Work Against the Clampdown" and "Paintings and Sculptures by Sally and Peter Saul," among others. Bridges is co-editor (along with Kristina Olson and Janet Snyder) of "Blanche Lazzell: The Life and Work of An American Modernist" (WVU Press, 2004). He received his MFA in printmaking at WVU and previously worked as a curator in the private sector in Chicago.
Aaron Levi Garvey
Aaron Levi Garvey is a Jewish-American Curator and Historian specializing in Modern and Contemporary Arts and Culture and has held positions within esteemed institutions, including as the Janet L. Nolan director of curatorial affairs at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, Founding Chief Curator of The Hudson Eye and Long Road Projects Foundation, and chief curator of the Andy Warhol Museum. Recent exhibitions include: The Hudson Eye a 10-day and 14-venue arts focused program in Hudson, New York, Arc of Life/Ark of Bones by Walter Hood and Migratory Roots by Kevin Brisco at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, Flashing the Leather and The Drowned group exhibitions at Alabama Contemporary, Chiharu Shiota’s site-specific installation “Infinity Lines” at the SCAD Museum of Art, Sheida Soleimani “Oppress(er)(ed)” with Long Road Projects, “Ephemera Obscura” at the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans and Manon Bellet's "MEMO" and Shikeith’s “notes towards becoming a spill” both at Atlanta Contemporary. Additionally, Garvey curated "We Are What You Eat" the inaugural art exhibition at the United Nations headquarters in New York City in 2016 and co-curated the Atlanta Biennial (ATLBNL): Recent Correspondence at the Atlanta Contemporary in August 2016.
Heather Harris
Service Assistant Professor of Art History & Curator of Education
Heather Harris has worked in arts education in a wide variety of contexts, both nationally and internationally. Though her background is in drama education, she became interested in art museums while conducting her doctoral research, leading to her appointment as the education coordinator at Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, Illinois. At the Art Museum at WVU, she works to forge robust partnerships with K–12 schools, institutions of higher education, and the larger community through planning and implementing interactive programs and tours. Heather received her BA in 2004 from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, her MA in educational theatre from New York University, and her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in curriculum and instruction.
Liza L. KirkAbel
Museum Facility Manager
A native of West Virginia, Liza L. KirkAbel has spent most of her career working in housing and residence life at colleges and universities in West Virginia. Her passion for the park system and the outdoors led her to complete the Seasonal Law Enforcement Training Program with the National Park Service, and she has worked as a park superintendent in southern West Virginia. She received a BS in recreation and tourism management from Concord University and an MA in tourism planning and development from California University of Pennsylvania.
Karen Louvar
Registrar
Karen Louvar started her museum career in 2005 as an intern at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park within the Curatorial and Education departments. She became a Museum Technician for the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt & Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Sites in New York, and Director of Riverview at Hobson Grove, a Victorian era house museum in Kentucky. After six years as the Collections Manager of Stratford Hall in Virginia, the boyhood home of two signers of the Declaration of Independence, and one of four places in the world with Miocene paleontology, Louvar returned to her home state of WV. She earned her BA in Arts Administration from the University of Kentucky, and her MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of Louisville.