Miriam Taylor is a Mississippi native who received both her B.A. in Journalism and B.A. in English from the University of Mississippi, before completing her Masters in Journalism at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. Taylor’s research interest lies in socially engaged museum practices and the potential for positive change when cultural institutions work in active partnership with and for diverse communities, with a specific focus on institutions in the Gulf South.
Prior to moving to New Orleans, Taylor spent time as a journalist and designer in New York City, and as an instructor at Syracuse University and the University of Mississippi. Her writing has appeared in Cultural Vistas, 64 Parishes, the New Orleans Times Picayune | Nola.com, the Syracuse New Times, Mississippi Magazine, Yall.co, and Fast Company, among other publications. Taylor is a graduate of the Bryan Bell Metropolitan Leadership Forum and a member of the Associate of Academic Museums and Galleries, the Southeastern Museums Conference, and the American Alliance of Museums.
Before joining the CCC program, Taylor worked as the communications director at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the external affairs manager at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University (NAM). She currently serves as the interim director of NAM where she has assisted in developing programs, events, and community partnerships and aided in producing, publicizing, and fundraising for such exhibitions as "Bmike Odums’ NOT Supposed 2-Be Here," "EMPIRE by artist collective Fallen Fruit," "LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint is Family", and the groundbreaking show "PerSister: Incarcerated Women of Louisiana," which was awarded the 2019 Museum Exhibition of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Arts.
During her time in the museum world Taylor has had the privilege to see people from all walks of life come together to heal, laugh, share, and create community; she has experienced first-hand the transformative power of art when diverse communities are actively engaged and their voices amplified. It is this power, process, and potential she hopes to engage further during her time at Tulane.
Museums, community engagement, Southern studies, art as social practice, creative industries and the cultural economy, community arts, cultural identities, politics of space
