2025 SEMC Leadership AwardsNominations for 2025 Leadership Awards are open! Award recipients will be notified by mid August 2025. SEMC Annual Awards are given in Recognition of Innovation, Service and Leadership BY Museum ProfessionalsNominate an Individual for a 2025 SEMC Award Read about the 2024 Award RecipientsThe SEMC Awards Committee needs your help to identify and honor outstanding colleagues who have helped shape the world of museums. 2025 award recipients will be honored at the Annual Awards Luncheon on October 22, 2025 in Montgomery, Alabama. The 2025 Awards Committee encourages all SEMC members to consider worthy friends, colleagues and mentors who, through their work with museums and their activities in museum associations, have provided exemplary service to the southeastern museum community. Award nominations will be accepted through July 31, 2025.
2025 PROFESSIONAL AWARDS are OFFERED IN THE FOLLOWING CATEGORIESPast James R. Short Award Recipients George McDaniel received the 2024 James. R. Short Award MUSEUM LEADERSHIP AWARD – Initiated in 1994, this award recognizes mid-career museum professionals who have shown significant advancement within the profession by leadership in museum activities at their institution, within the museum profession as a whole, and especially in the southeast region. Award eligibility requires ten years of experience as a museum staff member and a minimum of five years immediate past tenure with a museum in the SEMC region.
Past Museum Leadership Award Recipients
EMERGING MUSEUM PROFESSIONALS AWARD – Inaugurated in 2007, this award recognizes emerging professionals who have demonstrated excellence and leadership in museum activities at their institution, within the museum profession as a whole, and especially in the southeast region. Award eligibility requires less than ten years of experience as a museum staff member and a minimum of two years immediate past tenure with a museum in the SEMC region.
Past Emerging Museum Professional Award Recipients
OUTSTANDING SERVICE TO THE MUSEUM PROFESSION AWARD - Initiated in 1999, this award recognizes a leader with 10 years or more of service to an allied or affiliated professional organization. Such a leader will have assisted the museum profession in areas such as program organization, development of grant opportunities, creation of historic/cultural designations and long term cultural development. The nominee must have direct responsibility, and the programs must have impact on a broad scale – statewide or regionally.
Past Outstanding Service to the Museum Profession Recipients
DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTOR AWARD -Initiated in 1999, this award recognizes a non-museum professional who has contributed their leadership expertise, financial support or collections support over a period of 20 years or more to a museum or the museum field in the SEMC region. The nominee has shown distinction in leading/moving an institution or museum-field organization to a recognized position of leadership in collections, programs and/or exhibitions in the SEMC region. Past Distinguished Contributor Award Recipients
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