Nonprofit Talk: Making history come to life at Jamaica’s King Manor

Kelsey Brow is executive director at the King Manor. Photo courtesy of King Manor

By Kelsey Brow, as told to the Eagle

Kelsey Brow is executive director at the King Manor, which is located in Jamaica, and is celebrating 120 years as a museum this year. One of the longest-operating historic house museums in New York City, King Manor interprets the life and times of anti-slavery founding father Rufus King to foster critical thinking. Visitors can experience free museum tours, exhibits, craft days, festivals and community events, concerts, an ethnobotanical garden and seed library, plus much more.

We are now about six months since the pandemic essentially shut down most of New York City. How has your organization adapted during this time?

We’ve shifted a lot of our activities online and outdoors, but also taken this time to do some long-term projects that we hadn’t been able to really focus on during normal operations. We have a three-person full-time staff and one part-time, so there’s just a few of us doing everything. The mandated closure gave us some time to create a strategic plan and write an academic catalog that will be published early next year.

How are you now adjusted in serving your audience?

We didn’t have a lot of online programs before because we’re a historic site, so we want people to experience the space. Our tours, and especially our school field trips, incorporate a lot of kinetic or sensory learning, which is hard to replicate virtually. We’ve done a number of new online programs, but we’re also leveraging our outdoor space, which is large, and accessible, to partner with community organizations to host essential supply giveaways with a pop-up museum display or craft activity. Anyone who wants to use our outdoor area, please get in touch!

What, if any, new services or programs have you launched in response to the pandemic?

We’ve made many new programs. There’s a great series of online homeschooling activities on our website, and we keep adding new audiobooks to our “Rufus’s Library” series for children. Read by former radio host and museum caretaker Roy Fox, they’re a great way for busy parents to calm stressed kids and instill a love of reading. We also have several online learning modules in the works, similar to educational PC games. They replicate our method of teaching critical thinking and are designed to fit classroom curricula. Our modules for 5th and 2nd grades are nearly done, so watch this space! 

As you look the remaining part of 2020, what are your expectations and hopes?

This was supposed to be a big year for us, celebrating our 120th anniversary! We’re hosting our annual cocktail party online on September 17 so please join us for that! It should be a lot of fun—and you’ll get a special preview of our new exhibition, which looks critically at the history of women in preservation. We miss having visitors in the house, so we are excited to open back up later this month, though not having kids come on school field trips makes me really sad. I love seeing kids’ grow as learners during their time with us.

How have you personally been impacted by COVID-19?

I’m so fortunate that no one I’m close to has been seriously ill. I feel like I can’t complain when others have had terrible tragedies, but it really is a stressful time to be responsible for raising money to pay other people’s paychecks. I’m also very extroverted and love going to concerts or museums with friends in my free time... so let’s just say when this is all over, I never want to sit on my couch again!

What types of support do you most need support now?

Most of our programs are offered free of charge because we want to be accessible to as much of our community as possible. I dream of having a larger business sponsor one of our event series, like our family craft days, so we can keep being free while being able to pay my staff a living wage and fair benefits. We also need help getting the word out about what we do. We have a lot of great programs loved by those in-the-know, but we want everyone in our neighborhood to enjoy what we have to offer.

What do you think the future holds for your sector as a result of the pandemic?

It’s going to be rough as our sources of income and government support get cut. But museums are really good at long-term thinking—it’s what we do as historians—so in some ways I think we can be a leader in the recovery. This is New York City! People come here to visit and live for the culture, so we need to be a part of the conversation about how the city reshapes itself during and post pandemic.

Learn more at www.kingmanor.org.