For Immediate Release
June 30, 2025
North Carolina Museums Council (NCMC) Recently Announced Award Recipients
NCMC Awards provide a vehicle for promoting North Carolina museums
and related institutions through media news releases, membership, and
fundraising campaigns. Award recognition can also reinforce the quality of
a museum's initiatives and accomplishments in grant proposals and other
documents.
Thank you to the Awards Committee for the time they took considering this
year's nominations and to Jessie Swigger for her time and dedication to students in the field as chair of Student Affairs.
2025 Emerging Professional Award
The NCMC Emerging Museum Professional Award recognizes an outstanding individual who has worked in the museum industry for fewer than seven years.
This year's winner is described by her colleagues as “demonstrating exceptional flexibility, creativity, and professionalism in approaching difficult and often daunting job.” During her two and a half years in her position, this person has taken on a variety of responsibilities, from development to facilities management, visitor services to education. She enjoys finding ways to incorporate her creative talents and passions into her projects. Please join us in congratulating our winner, the Site Manager at the Orange County Historical Museum, Catie Atkinson!
2025 Awards of Excellence
The NCMC Award of Excellence is intended to honor exhibits, publications, and programs that exemplify excellence in the museum field. This competition showcases the best in our profession and in doing so promotes excellence and professionalism across the state.
This year the awards committee selected two winners in the category.
Our first winner created an interactive website that provides maps, information, and images of Churton Street businesses operating from 1768 through the present in downtown Hillsborough, NC. Visitors to the website can view information from ten different periods highlighting businesses and individual business owners. By clicking on the maps visitors learn about the growth, development, and changes in a major commercial area in Orange County. In addition to facts about these businesses, images include newspaper advertisements, legal notices and obituaries, portraits, photographs of street scenes and businesses, and area maps to help put changes in Churton Street into perspective. This in-depth mapping of historic Churton Street aligns with the museum’s mission to interpret the history of Hillsborough and Orange County.
Our 1st 2024 Award of Excellence winner is Orange County Historical Museum for their virtual exhibit - Mapping the Business of Churton Street.
Our second Award of Excellence goes to an individual as opposed to an institution - this award honors a guest curator:
To Take Shape and Meaning: Form and Design in Contemporary American Indian Art, was the first exhibition at the N.C. Museum of Art to focus exclusively on American Indian artists. It allowed NCMA to reimagine collection galleries to highlight multiple, diverse histories, voices, and perspectives. The exhibition, curated by this guest curator in collaboration with Linda Dougherty, NCMA’s chief curator and senior curator of contemporary art, brought together over seventy contemporary American Indian artists from across the country working in three dimensions and a rich array of media. The show called attention to traditional and contemporary practices and offered insight into the process of giving objects form and life to fulfill functional and cultural roles within Native tribes and cultures.
We are pleased to celebrate and award to the director and curator of The Museum of the Southeast American Indian at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke Nancy Strickland Chavis for her work on To Take Shape and Meaning with the North Carolina Museum of Art.
2025 Award of Special Recognition
The NCMC Award of Special Recognition honors an individual group or business affiliated with a museum in North Carolina who has demonstrated significant interest and support in the programs goals and policies were made significant contributions of time money or ideas to a museum in the state.
Our 2024 winner is not just a dedicated museum employee, but also a committed volunteer to help advance professionalism in the field through long-term involvement with the North Carolina Preservation Consortium and NCMC. In both volunteer organizations, our winner strives to create meaningful experiences through program development, membership cultivation, and topic-specific committee work. As an NCMC board member, our winner has served in many capacities and even rejoined the Board to fill an unexpected empty position. Not only did she fill the role but advanced its outreach and support of our members.
Congratulations to a steadfast advocate for improving our museums through her involvement with professional organizations and career in advancing accessibility for all museum patrons: Linda Jacobson.
2025 Dennis T. Lawson Memorial Award
The Dennis T. Lawson Memorial Award honors deceased members and supporters of the museum profession in North Carolina. The award was created in 1987 in honor of Dennis T. Lawson, Director of the High Point Museum & Historical Park, a respected and admired colleague who died suddenly and unexpectedly during the preceding year.
This year's winner has a CV that is long and winds from the Black Hills of the Dakotas to the Foothills of North Carolina. Rather than sharing a long list of his work history, we would like to highlight how our winner, Karl McKinnon, used his knowledge and experience to empower and encourage colleagues and younger professionals.
Karl was a leading voice on the NCMC Board for several years, advancing programs and opportunities of the science museums across the state. With fun enthusiasm, Karl would never miss an opportunity to share work, programs, and exhibits, as well as partnership opportunities to strengthen science museums across North Carolina. Karl’s dedication was not limited to the work, but also to colleagues. His often-soft-spoken manner helping navigate rough patches in our field, was thoughtful, respectful, and patient. His guidance led to advancing the goals of the organization. Karl supported colleagues in their growth as museum professionals by providing honest assessments and input but allowing room for discussion and all outcomes.
This year we renamed the Professional Service Award to the Karl McKinnon Memorial Award to celebrate his legacy year after year.
2025 William T. Alderson Lifetime Achievement Award
The William T. Alderson Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a retired museum professional for a lifetime of service commanding NCMC's respect and admiration to the body of work they accomplished in their career.
In their letters of support, nominators highlighted this winner as having a leading voice in our museum and as being a cultural community advocate for colleagues helping many of us through frustrating and difficult times. With over 30 years of experience, our winner has made an impact with the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, first as a records analyst working for State Archives records management program and then working as a regional supervisor of the Western Office - both positions held for 16 years. Our winner not only worked for the State of North Carolina for 23 years; he also serves on the NCMC Board and previously served for eight years on the board of the North Carolina Preservation Consortium.
His long career and commitment to professional and personal service to museums and museum professionals certainly deserve to be honored today with this award - congratulations, Jeff Futch!
2025 Karl McKinnon Professional Service Award
The NCMC Karl McKinnon Professional Service Award shall be presented to any individual currently employed at a North Carolina museum that has distinguished themselves in the museum field and or have professionally advanced the role of museums or that of NCMC.
This year's winner is a committed supporter of North Carolina museums and museum professionals. Her dedication to the NCMC has been critical to the organization's productivity and success over the years. In their nomination letters, colleagues speak to her thoughtfulness and knowledgeability as well as her leadership and commitment to the developing museum professionals of tomorrow. Our winner has been involved in many different roles in NCMC throughout her career and continues to serve in several committee roles.
Congratulations to Assistant Keeper at the NC Collections Gallery and our own Past President, Christian Edwards.
2025 NCMC Diversity & Inclusion Fellowship Award
The NCMC Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship Award represents our commitment to support the diversity of museum professionals employed across North Carolina.
This year’s Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship is awarded to Benjamin Clark. As a person who is wheelchair bound, he is committed to supporting all who wish to gain meaningful access to and engage with exhibits and programs. As his former supervisor at the Museum of the Southeast American Indian at UNC-Pembroke observed, “[Benjamin] understands, personally and profoundly, that accessibility isn’t just about physical space, it’s about creating environments where everyone can connect with our shared past.” Congratulations!
NCMC Student Travel Award
The Student Travel Award supports students who wish to attend the NCMC Annual Conference. The winner receives free conference attendance and a free student membership for one year.
Susan Huynh is a UNC Greensboro graduate student studying history, with a concentration in museum studies and historic preservation. Her research interests focus on Asian American and Pacific Islander history, especially in the American South. Susan's capstone project involved developing an exhibit based on oral history interviews she conducted with Asian community members on campus to expand UNCG's archives and institutional history. In her application she wrote that she is “excited to learn from other museum professionals, expand her perspectives, and continue to develop her skill set as she enters the field. Congratulations, Susan!
NCMC Summer Internship Award
For this award, NCMC provides one institutional member $1,500 to support a student internship.
This year’s Internship Award goes to the City of Raleigh Historic Resources Museum Program, which is offering an internship in collections focused on the accessioning of 54 ledger books donated by the Lightner’s, a well-known and prominent African American family in Raleigh. These ledger books are a wealth of information regarding their clients, funerary practices, and cemetery protocols for more than nine decades. Curator of Collections, Ainsley Powell, accepted this award on behalf of the museum. Congratulations!
For more information on awards, visit ncmuseums.org or contact Leslie Leonard, Awards Chair at awards@ncmuseums.org
