From the Director / Fall 2026

September 5, 2026

Greetings from the Allen! With this issue, we inaugurate a longer, annual magazine, focused more on stories about the museum. To make it easier to track our events, we’re also experimenting with a pull-out calendar that covers the entire year, with updates always available on our website.

We are proud to present the Allen’s new strategic plan, which will guide our work through 2028. The previous strategic plan had three key goals:

• Launch an architectural feasibility study for a proposed expansion
• Find a long-term solution to staffing museum security
• Establish new positions of deputy director and community coordinator.

By summer 2025, the museum had achieved all three goals, with an outstanding visitor-oriented security team in place, and excellent new hires, which you can read more about in this issue. We also completed an initial building study with New York’s Ennead Architecture, with more to share on that topic next year.

As a result, this past fall we decided to refresh the plan. We put forward new goals in alignment with my vision for the Allen, while holding fast to our core mission, vision, and values. Developed collectively by the entire team, the plan was guided by Julie Clarke and Elizabeth Voudouris from Business Volunteers Unlimited, a tremendous institution focused on regional non-profit excellence.

Our goals over the next three years focus on the needs of the here and now while prioritizing a sustainable future. Equity, care, a just use of resources, community relevance, and a deep sense of welcome and hospitality live at the plan’s core.

This compass will guide all our work over the next three years, and we expect you to hold us accountable to our pledges.

One major goal is to Support Oberlin College Students and Faculty with Museum Resources, and so we focus this issue on the myriad ways we work with our incredible students. Joanne Kim (OC 2026), who co-curated an exhibition on our long-neglected early Korean ceramics appears alongside a story on how our Gallery Guide program, which has launched so many Oberlin careers in the arts. We also received an extraordinary gift this year from Sue Duncan and Leo Fisher (both OC 1975) who have created a very welcome fund to support a new curatorial fellowship program, in which students will collaborate closely with our collections curators for an academic year and a summer, allowing for long-term career preparation alongside their studies at Oberlin.

And so much more, including an extraordinary rethinking of the Allen’s collection of art from the U.S., tied together through a commission from the Tongva artist Mercedes Dorame and featuring our remarkable new acquisition of a rare daguerreotype depicting Oberlin’s first Black graduate, George Vashon.

Let me know what you think.

Jon L. Seydl
John G. W. Cowles Director