Peabody Essex Museum

Mission

Founded in 1799 in Salem, Massachusetts, 15 miles from Boston, the Peabody Essex Museum is the oldest continuously operating museum in the United States. Now among the top 8% of American art museums, PEM is also one of the nation’s fastest growing art museums and operates on a global stage in terms of networks, partners, and patronage. PEM has achieved unprecedented growth over the past two decades. In 2003, PEM completed one of the most striking museum transformations in American history, including exponential growth of the operating budget and the addition of over 250,000 square feet of new and renovated gallery and public spaces. This includes 26,000 square feet of changing exhibition galleries and 55,000 square feet of galleries devoted to collection installations. In 2011, the museum announced a comprehensive and singular advancement campaign for $650M. The campaign focuses on increasing an already healthy endowment to support an expanded exhibition program; programmatic initiatives ranging from the interpretive to the digital and educational; global leadership initiatives; and an institutional culture of creativity, all in concert with fiscal stability and sound management, based on annual budget of $31 million. PEM is adding a 40,000 square-foot wing scheduled to open in summer 2019. It will include 15,000 square feet of galleries for collection installations and additional public and educational spaces. The museum is also developing a 110,000 square-foot offsite collection center for the care and study of the museum’s collection of more than 1 million works. Between 2017 and 2022, PEM will develop new collection installations museum-wide, based on innovative experience, interpretation and design strategies that reflect the museum’s commitment to drawing on multiple fields of inquiry, including neuroscience. Annually, the museum welcomes 250,000 people. It employs 250 staff and engages over 110 docent guides in support of PEM’s educational mission.