April 2025 Member of the Month
Meet Dr. Kaila T. Schedeen, Exhibitions and Collections Manager at Art Galleries at Black Studies (AGBS), The University of Texas at Austin!
What’s one thing — either industry/work-related or not — you learned in the past month?
I’ve recently learned a lot more about drywall and temporary wall building than I ever thought I would need to know. Part of my role involves organizing various contractors to come in during install since we don’t a have full-time preparator on staff. It’s been super interesting to learn more about the construction side of exhibition planning, including all the specialized types of work that lay the groundwork for exhibitions. These folks are often artists themselves and bring amazing skills and knowledge to our spaces.
What do you value about your membership with AAMG?
We are a small team with limited resources and big dreams, so I’m very appreciative of AAMG events such as the Virtual Convening (which I attended this past November), webinars, the listserv, etc. to keep up with best practices in the field and see what other institutions are doing. For example, the recent session with Erika Kvam at VC24 on “Building the Next Generation of Museum Professionals” was massively informative and I keep returning to it as a potential model for various elements of our own operations.
If you could trade places with anyone for a day, who would it be?
There’s not any one person I want to trade places with, but I wouldn’t mind being a backup dancer during Beyoncé’s recent Christmas day performance of Cowboy Carter. It was magical to watch; I can only imagine how magical it was to be a part of.
Coffee or Tea?
Coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon. I love them both!
Book/Author suggestion?
One of my favorite books from last year was Percival Everett’s James, a retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved companion Jim (here known as James). Everett gave a lecture at UT last year sponsored by The Warfield Center, which is housed within our same department. It was incredible to hear the author read excerpts and speak firsthand about writing the novel. You can see the recorded event here.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I wanted to be an artist and was convinced that I would be the next Vincent van Gogh. While that didn’t work out (probably for the best), I always knew I wanted to be in the arts and have sustained that interest over the years. In high school I decided that I wanted to be an art historian and never looked back.
What do you enjoy most about being a part of an academic museum?
My favorite part of my job is working in spaces energized by student learning and engagement. There’s something so powerful about the amount of hope and innovation that younger generations bring to our galleries. They are a testament to how essential the arts and humanities are to shaping fully rounded humans, and I love learning from their thought processes. I also love passing through campus and seeing all the amazing things they put together; this week there was a full farmer’s market! My colleague and I bought kale while discussing tours of our current exhibition Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy, 1924-2024.
What are your hopes for our industry?
My hope is that art institutions continue to thrive in university spaces as a reminder of how important the visual realm is to understanding the world and our place in it. I believe that part of ensuring this stability is creating more paid opportunities for students to receive training and mentorship in the arts. Additionally, I hope that salaries see an upward trend in art spaces, particularly in entry-level positions where they are the lowest and most deserved. We need better compensation to not only attract the brilliant staff that keep our institutions running, but to retain them as well!
Bonus: Do you have a favorite joke to share?
I got carded at a liquor store, and my Blockbuster card accidentally fell out. The cashier said never mind.
