Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has a new leadership
The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago. Charles Rex Arbogast / AP Photo
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has a new leadership
The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago. Charles Rex Arbogast / AP Photo

Liesl Olson started as director at The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum earlier this month. Previously, she led a program for Chicago Studies at the Newberry Library. She joined WBEZ to talk about her future plans for this landmark of Chicago history.

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has a new leadership
The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago. Charles Rex Arbogast / AP Photo
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has a new leadership
The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago. Charles Rex Arbogast / AP Photo

Liesl Olson started as director at The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum earlier this month. Previously, she led a program for Chicago Studies at the Newberry Library. She joined WBEZ to talk about her future plans for this landmark of Chicago history.

Melba Lara: You’re listening to WBEZ. The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has a new leader. Liesl Olson started as director there earlier this month. Previously, she led a program for Chicago Studies at the Newberry Library. Now, she joins us to talk about her future plans for this landmark of Chicago history. Leisl, thanks for joining us.

Liesl Olson: Thanks for having me, Melba.

Melba Lara: And for those who don't know the history, what was Hull-House?

Liesl Olson: Hull-House was the country's most influential settlement house. It was founded by Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. And it was a place where people could help serve and live with the poor. So, here at 800 South Halsted Street on the Near West Side of Chicago, this in 1889 was really the nexus of Chicago's many immigrant communities. And Addams and Starr wanted to help the urban poor. So, they initially moved into a kind of remaining old mansion, the Hull Mansion, which is where the museum is today. And there were all kinds of social services offered to the community at Hull-House from the city's very first kindergarten, to classes you could take in the English language, in art. A real wealth of opportunities.

Melba Lara: Leisl, you started as the director earlier this month of the museum. Tell us more of the kinds of research and the educational topics that you want to highlight.

Liesl Olson: We really want to kind of leverage that past for the present. And let me give you a few examples of what we have going on in the next few months. So, we're at a moment right now where across the country books are being banned. So we are partnering with the Jane Addams Peace Association and Chicago Public Libraries for the second year in a row to present the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards. So we really want to support stories that champion social justice learning for young children. We're also building a new tours. So if you're somebody who's really interested in art and architecture, we'll have a tour focused just on the art and architecture of both Hull-House, it's dining hall, the architecture around UIC and the Near West Side. We'll also have the tour focused on issues of gender and sexuality. And then another tour focused around the Mexican immigrant experience on the Near West Side. So those are things that were building towards really excited about them.

Melba Lara: You came from the Chicago Studies Program at the Newberry Library. How did that job prepare you for this one?

Liesl Olson: Yes, I love the Newberry. In some ways, it's a natural transition. I had worked with Hull-House through various programs I did at the Newberry. And, you know, I've been writing about Chicago for a while now, especially the women of Chicago who were so important to the city's literary and cultural infrastructure. And Hull-House is really the kind of starting point for these histories of Chicago women who put social justice really at the crux of their lives in their art and their work. You know, I'm sitting right now in my office which is above the historic dining hall. And when I go downstairs and I stand in that space, I mean, it's just kind of overwhelming to feel the legacy of so many people who have been in the space. Not just Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, but some of my real idols like Ida B Wells, who was here, the activist and educator. Or Gertrude Stein, the mother of the avant garde. She came and spoke here. Frank Lloyd Wright came and spoke here. So this is really a space that I have been thinking about for a long time. What can be accomplished in this space and the women who inhabited this space. I mean, it's a place of women's radicalism and unconventional living and really consciousness raising of the highest order. So I'm just really, really glad to be here.

Melba Lara: Leisl Olson is the new director of the Jane Adams Hull-House Museum. Thanks so much for joining us.

Liesl Olson: Oh, thanks so much for having me.


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