Robert Fields has been named Keynote Speaker for the Museum Association of New York: The Power of Partnership Conference, set for March 29th-31st, in Albany. Fields’ keynote is set for 9 am on Tuesday, March 31st.
Fields is the President & Executive Director of Weeksville Heritage Center, an historic house museum in Brooklyn dedicated to keeping the history of one of the largest free black communities in pre-Civil War America relevant and resonant for contemporary audiences.
In 2019, Fields spearheaded a crowdsourcing campaign that raised over $700,000 to save the institution from closing its doors. Because of his close work with New York City, Weeksville is on the path to becoming the first new member of the city’s Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) in over 20 years. The CIGs are a cohort of 34 cultural institutions that have permanent line items in the NYC budget.
Prior to Weeksville, Fields was the marketing director for CMO Initiatives at the Association of National Advertisers, a marketing industry trade association. Over his career, he has worked for brands such as IBM, Burger King, Panasonic, and General Motors, and for arts & culture organizations such as the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), the Black Rock Coalition, and the Urbanworld Film Festival.
Fields has been a longtime proponent of progressive, left-of-center global black culture, which he highlighted through Bold As Love, an online magazine he published from 2007-2017.
His writing has appeared in publications such as Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Root, The Grio, and PSFK.
More information on the Power of Partnership Museums Conference in Albany can be found on the Museum Association of New York’s website.
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