Hannah Powell: Pushing the University Art Gallery forward

Hannah Powell had a long journey to her position at the University Art Gallery — from studying in Scotland to working at a national museum in Washington D.C., Powell eventually made her way to Pitt. Now, she says she found her fit.

Any student who visits the UAG benefits from Powell’s behind-the-scenes work. In the back of the Frick Fine Arts building, Hannah Powell is one of two full-time employees tasked with coordinating exhibitions, planning educational programming and improving accessibility to a collection of over 3,000 pieces.

Powell currently serves as the UAG’s first official coordinator. Since beginning her role in 2024, she is proud of how her work helps strengthen the UAG’s professional mission on campus.

Before starting her career in collection management — which included working in museums all over Pittsburgh — Powell graduated from Pitt in 2016 with a degree in anthropology and a minor in museum studies. In her free time, she sang in the Treble Choral Ensemble. She still loves to sing and perform, though the UAG and her new baby takes up much of her time.

Powell has been interested in archeology since she was a child, but she felt like museum studies just clicked for her. She was not as interested in the archeological digs as the actual items found. 

Powell moved to Scotland after her undergraduate career to pursue a masters degree in museum studies from the University of Glasgow, where she worked with a community archeology group to document findings and create pop-up exhibits.

“I lived abroad for a little over a year, and it was life-changing,” Powell said. “I felt like I was part of the community.”

Once moving back to the U.S., Powell worked several part-time jobs — “in everything” — in Pittsburgh before landing a position at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where she worked on a large team solely devoted to collections. 

“It was my first full-time job in museums, and I felt like it was never going to happen,” Powell said. “I was one of eight people that just worked on collections, which is just kind of crazy when you think here [at the UAG], we have just two people doing everything.” 

Though breaking into the museum field can be tough, Powell says that Pittsburgh’s community is tight-knit. Through professional connections made through other jobs such as art handling, Powell felt lucky to be able to find room to forge a career in collections.

At the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Powell did a lot of practical work by labeling objects with barcodes and pulling relevant items for researchers.

“I was very specialized in working with their film and oral history collection, but the actual physical objects — the film reels, microfilm, all of that kind of stuff,” Powell said.

In one memorable instance, Powell worked with a vintage 1930s KitchenAid mixer that a family brought from Europe. She was especially captivated by how little the design changed from the ‘30s to today.

“That was just so cool to me that it was brought by a family who was fleeing Europe at the time, and they were like, ‘Can’t leave without our KitchenAid mixer,’” Powell said. “And it was just such a cool object because you could just tell that it had been well-used and well-loved.”

COVID-19, and the resulting “chaos” on the museum field, was a catalyst for Powell to move back to Pittsburgh where she had a variety of roles at institutions like the Heinz History Center and the Carnegie Science Center. Eventually, a role opened up back at Pitt. 

Powell says that though the transition from larger museum spaces to the smaller and “scrapp[ier]” UAG was overwhelming at times, it has also been rewarding.

“You felt like you were kind of just a tiny cog in a machine, whereas coming to the UAG, I feel like I have a lot more of an impact on what we do,” Powell said. 

She also enjoyed being back in Pittsburgh, where she enjoys hiking in places like Schenley Park and knows where to get a good coffee. Though Pitt has changed since she was a student, Powell says that there’s a comfort in coming back to a place you know.

At the UAG, along with working with contractors and art handlers, Powell also helps lead an internship preparatory course, where she helps pair students in museum studies with an internship that aligns with their career goals.

“It’s really nice to be able to share what I’ve learned over my more-than-a-decade now career in the field and be able to help the next generation,” Powell said.

Powell enjoys the ability to work closely with college students, and help expand the museum studies program from the small program it was in her undergraduate career.

“Being able to have my now-position, I think it’s allowed us to do more,” Powell said. “We’ve served a lot more classes, we’ve had more programming — I think that our exhibitions have grown over the last three years, so I think we’ve gained a lot of momentum.”

Sylvia Rhor, director of the UAG, would agree. Powell’s extensive experience in collection management has allowed her to take on new projects updating digital access to university collections.

“Hannah has made it possible for us to expand the UAG exhibition schedule, our public programs and student outreach — and she helps us do our work better,” Rhor said. 

Harrison Howell, a senior history major, was one student who took the museum studies internship prep class with Powell last spring, where they discussed topics like average payrolls, government funding and resumes. After individual consultations, Powell helped place Howell in an internship at the Heinz History Center.

“Powell was very patient and accommodating in her approach,” Howell said. “The people [at the UAG] have been a great insight into the world of preservation and storytelling.”

Ellie Kannel, a junior museum studies and literature major, appreciates how Powell approaches her job with kindness and optimism. According to Kannel, Powell is a “force of nature” for the museum studies program.

“As humanities majors a lot of what we hear about our futures is that there are no jobs for us, or that we can’t make a living wage off of our passions,” Kannel said.

However, Powell speaks realistically about the field while also outlining feasible paths.

According to senior museum studies major Lauren Shuty, her coordinated internship with the Jonas Salk collection “was the most helpful and informative experience” and “really reaffirmed [her] career goals.”

“Hannah talked with us about her job at the UAG,” Shuty said. “She wears many hats around Frick, and she is always present in whatever she is doing or teaching.”

Right now, Powell says that the UAG is in a “chrysalis phase” — the space will be shut down while she and Rhor transform the groundwork of the UAG by updating infrastructure and ground policies. The entire collection will be moved to a separate location in the meantime.

“We just finished an inventory of the collections that involved checking the location of everything, looking at it, seeing if it was stable for the move and updating the database,” Powell said. “Now that’s all going to move out, and then once the building is closed, we will also be off-site.”

While students are out of the building, Powell is going to continue to think about how to deepen the gallery’s outreach across Pitt’s campus.

“No one’s allowed in the building, and we’ll be taking that time to think about our future,” Powell said. “I’m going to be doing a lot of planning, thinking and writing new things.”

One of the projects for the newly shut down UAG is a “nothing to see here” party, complete with a live DJ and dancefloor, food in the galleries, graffiti and costume contest.

Outside of her work pulling the strings for the UAG, Powell finds a balance between additional roles as a published author, hiking blogger and new mother. Though she finds herself busy juggling these roles, she continues to work towards a more accessible future for the UAG.

“We’re not always known, even on campus, let alone beyond,” Powell said. “So I would love to see us be a place more people visit.”