The Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) recently announced the addition of a new position to the museum’s team, focused on enhancing accessibility and inclusion: chief engagement officer. Berit Ness, former associate director and curator of academic engagement at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, is stepping into the new role at the Chazen; Antiques and The Arts Weekly spoke with Ness to get the inside scoop on the brand-new position and how it engages with the community at large.

Congratulations on becoming the Chazen Museum of Art’s first-ever chief engagement officer! How did this position come about?

Thank you! It is wonderful to have the opportunity to join the Chazen Museum of Art in this inaugural role. Under director Amy Gilman’s leadership, the Chazen has committed to being increasingly more welcoming and accessible. From making operational changes to be open seven days a week to hiring dedicated academic and public programming staff, my colleagues at the Chazen have concertedly focused on expanding access to students, staff, faculty and community members.

The chief engagement officer role is the next phase of this multi-year effort and was created to also bring together the museum’s academic and public engagement, visitor services and communications departments to holistically serve visitors’ experiences. As I come into this newly created position, I am eager to develop new threads of collaboration across the museum both internally and with the public.

You are a graduate of UW-Madison. What did you study there, and how did it lead you to where you are today?

I was a graduate student in UW-Madison’s art history department, which is physically housed in the Chazen’s Elvehjem building. As a student, I leveraged this close relationship to incorporate many artworks from the Chazen’s collection in my studies — including for my master’s thesis, which drew inspiration from a Claes Oldenburg sculpture that is now irreversibly decaying due to an inherent material defect. This experience working directly with collections, archives and the people who steward them deepened my love of working in museums. Now that I am within the institution, I strive to regularly support student research projects and emphatically make the Chazen’s collection accessible to the next generation of curious-minded people.

Read more at Antiques and the Arts Weekly.