At ԱƵ, a professional path often takes shape both inside and outside the classroom. For Tabby Saour ’26, it led from holding several University Museums jobs as a student to supervising the museums’ gallery attendants and museum ambassadors, just months after graduation.
Saour is now the education and engagement fellow for the University Museums, a one-year position. A history major with minors in Japanese and museum studies, she started in the museums as a gallery assistant in her first year and later worked as a student curatorial assistant and museum ambassador.
In fall 2023, her sophomore year, Saour became a student research assistant at the Longyear Museum of Anthropology, learning to conduct provenance research on the job. She credits that work with landing her an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) the following summer.
As a rising junior, Saour interned in collections management in the Met’s Asian Art Department, where she conducted provenance research on the jade collection, took part in a weekly museum seminar program, and assisted the department’s provenance researcher with administrative work she had learned at University Museums.
Her supervisor, Hwai-Ling Yeh-Lewis, the senior collections manager, brought her to several Asian Art storage rooms, including a newly renovated space behind one of the Arms and Armor galleries. Yeh-Lewis pulled out a drawer of jade netsuke, small carved sculptures that Edo-period Japanese wearers used as a kimono pocket fastener. “I got to see so many of them up close, literally in the palm of her hand,” Saour said. Yeh-Lewis led her through a gallery displaying pieces from the Bishop jade collection — the very collection Saour was researching — and explained the colors of jade and methods of carving.
That fall, Saour began as a student curatorial assistant at the Picker Art Gallery, a job she held until graduation. Among many responsibilities during her time there, she researched the provenance of the gallery’s Coptic and ancient Egyptian textiles, wrote acquisition reports to add to its collection, and researched traveling exhibitions. The Picker’s scale and pace differ from the Met’s, she said, but the position expanded her knowledge of museums and let her enjoy work on a small team once again.
As a fellow, Saour also develops social media content for the museums and collaborates on programming. Darwin Rodriguez, museum operations manager, said Saour draws on skills that she built as president of the Organization of Asian Sisters in Solidarity and in her work at the ALANA Cultural Center, along with her faculty connections, to create programming that “immediately resonates with the student body.”
In August, during first-year orientation, she helped facilitate the Dana Arts Center DISCOvery, a disco-themed event where incoming students joined activities and explored the Picker Art Gallery, Brehmer Theater, music practice rooms, and other Dana facilities.
When she helped hire this semester’s student staff, Saour said hearing how applicants connected with museums reminded her of herself as a first-year and gave her “so much hope for their next four years with University Museums and the future of the program overall.”
Saour is already looking ahead. She takes part in departmentwide meetings, works closely with colleagues, and is learning to lead meetings of her own. Her long-term goal is a career in collections management, the field she explored in her Met internship.
Susanna White, head of collections at University Museums, has become a mentor, meeting with Saour about graduate school options, connecting her with collections professionals and advising her on breaking into the field, including the value of hands-on experience. White has also offered to train her on The Museum System (TMS), collections management software used by museums around the world.
“My hope is that the skills and relationships she’s honed here at ԱƵ serve her in what I hope is a long and fruitful career in museum work, and Tabby is able to look back and see how far she has come from her days at University Museums,” Rodriguez said.