All We Do... Teach

Irene Nielsen - Irene's Teas – Irene redefines Renaissance Woman - She has done it all! She has been in medicine, financial services and planning, and has patented inventions. Since she turned 55 she has started no fewer that 6 businesses, most in the small Kansas town of Lindsborg. She is definitely a dynamo and someone that is inspirational to know.

Barbara Brown Lee - Chief Educator, Milwaukee Art Museum. Barbara has been intimately involved in many aspects of the evolving museum since 1963, not only serving as educator but as first contact for many individuals and organizations. Barbara studied at the University of Arizona, the University of Guadalajara, Mexico; the Winterthur Museum Institute; and the Attingham Summer School, Shropshire, England. She received the Wisconsin Outstanding Art Educator Award from the Wisconsin Art Education Association, and has served on the Board of Directors of the Creative Sharp Presentations, Inc., involved in literacy programs.

At MAM her duties have included directing docent programs; collaborating with curatorial staff regarding exhibitions and activities; training of volunteers, staff and guards; planning and implementation for education gallery exhibitions including the long running Scholastic Art Competition. She has been a teacher of high school students in the Satellite Art Program and lecturer for community outreach, and a juror for many art exhibitions. As art critic James Auer stated in a Journal Sentinel article, Barbara “... (serves) as an often enlightening, always entertaining human conduit between the museum and its patrons”. Asked why she has spent her life looking at art and interpreting it for others, she replied, “Because art talks to me about life on the planet. Our skills, our abilities, our creative imagination . . . to me, an art museum is the soul of mankind.”