-Brittany Cook presents “Object-Based Learning”

-Good Tour/Bad Tour presented by Peter Gittleman

Speaker Bios:

Brittany Cook (Victoria Mansion) holds an MA in Museum Education from Tufts University and a BA in Theatre Studies from Guilford College. Brittany has worked in nonprofit arts organizations for over a decade and is currently the Development & Communications Coordinator at Victoria Mansion. She has designed and delivered programming for Victoria Mansion including lectures, performances, and thematic tours, and conducts research for the Unwilling Architects Initiative, focusing on the lives of the known individuals enslaved by the Mansion’s original owners in New Orleans. She enjoys helping make museums and other arts institutions accessible and equitable community spaces.

Peter Gittleman (Team Leader, Visitor Experience, Historic New England) graduated from Tufts University majoring in anthropology and French. He earned a Master of Arts in Preservation Studies from Boston University. His thesis was entitled, “The Gropius House: Conception, Construction, and Criticism.” Peter has been working for Historic New England (formerly known as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities – SPNEA) since 1985. He started as a volunteer tour guide at the Otis House in downtown Boston and later became head of interpretation for all Historic New England’s historic house museums. Today Peter supervises the visitor experience at the organization’s 36 sites, a job that encompasses public programs for adults and families, school and youth programs, and, of course, the house tours. Each year, Peter is responsible for training up to 100 new guides to interpret Historic New England's sites. Peter's professional activities include serving as board president of the Royall House and Slave Quarters, a historic house museum in Medford, Massachusetts. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts in a very drafty, 1909 house.