Leading the museum community in healing after the Boston Marathon Bombing

Greater Boston’s museums, libraries, and archives had a unique opportunity to support their local communities in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. I led a consortium of these institutions in collecting, interpreting, and supporting recovery, with an emphasis on programming for the one-year anniversary in April 2014.

#BostonBetter has multiple meanings. On one hand, better means healing—better physically and emotionally. But it also means an improvement in quality: a better choice, a better life. It is Abraham Lincoln's "better angels of our nature" and William Faulkner's "try to be better than yourself." Our goal with #BostonBetter was to start a conversation: What helps you heal? What helps the city heal? Together, how can we show the world that our response to the bombing is to summon our best selves, individually and collectively?

Our 25 partner institutions included the New England Museum Association, Boston Public Library, Boston City Archives, Boston Children’s Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Design Museum Boston, Cambridge Public Library, and Newton Free Library.

See photos from Dear Boston: Messages from the Makeshift Memorial, the exhibition I curated at Boston Public Library.

Watch my TEDxBoston talk, Our Year of Mourning, about leading the #BostonBetter effort.