Introducing Andrea Renner, Assistant Rare Map Librarian, Rumsey Map Center

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Andrea (pronounced An-Drey-Yah) Renner, our new Assistant Rare Map Librarian, who actually started on March 9, 2020, one day before we were all sent packing to our homes due to COVID-19 and the soon to follow shelter-in-place order.

The position is three-fourth time and is a term, donor funded position and as such was not affected fiscally due to COVID-19. Andrea comes from the world of museums with her last stint at the Oakland Museum of California where she was their Associate Curator of History and before that, she  was the Curator of Exhibitions at the Fairfield Museum and History Center in Fairfield, Connecticut. Prior to that she was an Andrew W. Mellon fellow at the Museum of the City of New York. Andrea holds a Bachelor's degree from UC-Berkeley, a Masters in the History of Art at the University of Delaware and a Phd from Columbia University also in the History of Art.

 Andrea brings with her a love of maps, expertise in urban studies and an eye for combining the aesthetic with the intellectual along with project management skills necessary to bring exhibitions and other projects to fruition.  Her role at the Center where she works three-fourth time is to oversee the exhibitions program, support the teaching and research functions of the Center as well as provide additional support to our other programming, including our map related conferences. In her short time thus far with the Center, which we operated from our living rooms at home, Andrea has supported classes and workshops, authored an on-going Maps in Focus in our monthly newsletter (see this one on Armchair Travels) and created two storymaps here and here and a blogpost on Mapping Slavery and Emancipation using materials from the Center’s collections. 

 We at the Center are delighted to have her on board and look forward to many fruitful years as a co-worker, colleague and friend. Do not be surprised if she contacts you out of the blue for a zoom meeting to acquaint herself with your work at Stanford Libraries. She has fit right in our world of libraries and special collections and I so look forward to what we can create together for the Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries and the world of rare and historic cartography.