Rebekah Beaulieu, left, will succeed retiring director Jeffrey Andersen, right. —Cheryl Poirier photo

OLD LYME, CONN. – Rebekah Beaulieu has been named director of the Florence Griswold Museum. She succeeds retiring director Jeffrey Andersen, who transformed the institution into an important center for historic American art, especially that of the Lyme art colony, during his 41-year tenure at the institution. Beaulieu joins the museum on February 19. Andersen is expected to step down in March.

Beaulieu most recently served as associate director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Her extensive experience in the museum field includes a stint as the first executive director of the Winchester Historical Society in Massachusetts, where her duties included the management of the Sanborn House Historical and Cultural Center. She is a trustee for the Pejepscot Historical Society in Brunswick, Maine, and was appointed to the Public Arts Commission and Historical Commission Review Board there. She is also a board member of the New England Museum Association, a faculty member of the American Association for State and Local History’s Seminar for Historical Administration and a peer reviewer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, among other credentials.

Originally from Wisconsin, Beaulieu earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from George Washington University and master’s degrees in art history, museum studies and arts administration from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Columbia University. She completed doctoral studies in American and New England Studies at Boston University.

The new director served as managing editor for Modern Intellectual History, an academic journal published by Cambridge University Press, and is the author of Financial Fundamentals for Historic House Museums, published in 2017. With Dawn Salerno, director of the Mystic Museum of Art, and Mark S. Gold, Beaulieu is co-editing The State of Museums: Voices from the Field, to be published in the fall of 2018 for the hundredth anniversary of the New England Museum Association.

Beaulieu will relocate to southeastern Connecticut with her husband, Patrick Ford, project archivist for the Maine Historical Society in Portland.

The new director was selected after a national search conducted by the firm Korn Ferry and lead by John E. Noyes. Search committee members included Old Lyme art dealer Jeffrey Cooley and philanthropist David W. Dangremond, among others.

The Florence Griswold Museum is at 96 Lyme Street in Old Lyme. For information, www.florencegriswoldmuseum.org or 860-434-5542.