Debbie Schaefer-Jacobs: A Curator's Quest​ A look into the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History

I had the pleasure of speaking with Debbie Schaefer-Jacobs, curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in the Division of Cultural and Community Life specializing in artifacts that relate to education. We spoke about her academic and professional journeys, object-based education and research, and her current projects and passions.


Ever since high school Debbie was captivated by the humanities, studying art history, social history, and narrative history as interrelated and inseparable. Growing up, she found inspiration in her family’s frequent road trips to national parks and visits to museums near her home just outside of New York City. Her family supported her love of historical sights and inquiry, but they were concerned about its promise as a career path. While she favored coursework in arts and humanities, Debbie conceded to a deal with her parents to try her hand at business first. Debbie attended the University of Rhode Island (URI) along with her best friend, as her preferred school, Dartmouth, was not accepting women until the following year. In Debbie’s words, “oh well”—URI was replete with historical houses and sights that fed her love of archival study, and was located near renowned museums where she found internships even as an undergraduate student. She kept her word and took business classes her first year, but her passions trumped her parents’ fear of practicality, and Debbie graduated with a double major in History and Art History. It turned out to be the beginning of a deeply rewarding career.


Upon her graduation in 1976, there were only four graduate programs in the country that offered degrees specializing in museum studies. Debbie chose to attend Texas Tech University because their MA in Museum Science degree offered a general field of study, rather than a specialized program in museum education or art history offered at the other schools. Her time at Texas Tech was filled with profound and varied academic, professional, and artistic experiences ranging across donor event organization, decorative arts collection, American history scholarship, loom weaving, silkscreening and spinning. The depth and breadth of her experience prepared her for an internship at the Smithsonian in the Division of Political History upon her graduation, followed by a decades-long career at the institution. As Debbie put it, “The Smithsonian had everything, so I figured I could stay.”

The exhibition Many Voices, One Nation is an exploration of the American
ideal E pluribus unum, Out of many, one.

Debbie described her two favorite roles at the Smithsonian as working with donors to bring objects into the collection, and giving presentations about object-based research. One of her recent acquisitions was a gift of 800 objects spanning over two centuries from the private collection of Richard Lodish, former Lower School headmaster at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Her current acquisition projects are driven by a desire to fill in the gaps of representation within a collection that has historically favored a culturally dominant narrative. She also spoke of her desire to encourage academic historians to incorporate three-dimensional artifacts as a resource in their studies—generally historians prefer the use of charts, archival materials, maps, and photographs but omit the physical objects. Debbie is a tireless advocate for historical objects, for the artifacts that physically embody our cultures, and eagerly shares her passion through presentations to academics, school groups, and the general public.


Of course there are also aspects of her work that don’t exactly spark joy. Throughout her forty years in the field she has seen many changes in administrations, processes, laws, and regulations, yet she still finds herself in meetings discussing the same issues. She also described a frustration with federally mandated requirements regarding publications that have not been updated since the 1960s. While she and her colleagues publish an enormous amount of online content—web labels, online didactic materials, interviews, news reports, social media content, blogs, etc—only scholarly, peer-reviewed articles or books meet the federal mandates for publication reflected in their annual professional evaluations. While the mandates have not adapted to the age of the internet, Debbie’s work at the Smithsonian has flourished in the digital age, designing online content, learning, and programming as a way to connect across physical or economic barriers. Debbie and her colleagues are developing additional digital content and collections in response to the Covid-19 crisis, and preparing for a new normal in museum visits and education, but as she says “It’s ongoing, the story hasn’t been written yet, and we’re adapting as we go.”


You can access the materials from the National Museum of American History at their website americanhistory.si.edu/. Check out their interactive activities for K-12 students at 
americanhistory.si.edu/kids/kids-things-do-home or explore their online collections at americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/online.


Article by Allison Koehler, MOTAL Intern from Claremont Graduate University.