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Ami Naff (she/her) is an Exhibits Researcher at the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS). Her work is focused on identifying the questions, stories, and material culture that help make exhibits come to life for visitors.
She gets most excited by opportunities to collaborate with community members in the process of developing exhibit content, creating a bridge from the visitor to those with lived experience and other experts.
She has worked on exhibits such as First Avenue: Stories of Minnesota’s Mainroom and Extraordinary Women, and the upcoming exhibit Historic Fort Snelling: Reflections on the Human Experience.
Ami has been a co-leader of the POCI ERG at MNHS since January 2021. She graduated in 2017 from Macalester College with a B.A. in Philosophy and Critical Theory.
You can’t pour from an empty cup. But within predominantly white institutions, where can staff of color turn to fill our cups? How do we recharge, restore, and reconnect? At the Minnesota Historical Society, the People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) Employee Resource Group has been experimenting with different ways to create space and care for each other. We’ll share strategies we’ve implemented, their advantages and pitfalls, and our lessons learned. And, importantly, we’ll explore how to do this without overextending ourselves even more.