About Erica Donnis
Since establishing her consulting business in 1999, Erica Donnis has worked for museums, archives, historic sites, historical societies, libraries, for-profit companies, and private clients in New England and beyond on projects related to historic interiors, museum and archival collections, and exhibitions. She provides short-term and long-term consulting services and has expertise working with a wide range of collections sizes and budgets. Download her CV here.
Erica Donnis
Curator
A graduate of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture (now American Material Culture), Erica served as the full-time curator of collections for two historic sites in New England from 1998 to 2004. In both roles, she was the first professional curator on staff and was responsible for primary-source research, interpretation, restoration projects, establishing collections systems and policies, arranging archival collections, and cataloging museum collections.
Historian
Erica seeks a holistic understanding of the everyday lives of Americans, the places where they lived and worked, and the objects they owned and used.
Her 2010 book The History of Shelburne Farms: A Changing Landscape, An Evolving Vision, commissioned by Shelburne Farms, won the 2011 Historic New England Book Prize.
Consultant
Erica has worked with many organizations to establish priorities for collections management and collections preservation, develop realistic plans according to the available resources, author policies that guide board members and staff in making large and small decisions, and implement cataloging, arrangement, rehousing, and digitization projects.