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16 ACUMEN • SPRING 2021 students, faculty and staff, the Lehigh Valley commu- nity, and the broader world connected to the university through the internet. You can glimpse the future of LUAG in what is happening in the art galleries now. “We’ve grown our attendance by 86 percent, which is unheard of in a museum field, and I think it really speaks to the amount of interest and enthusiasm that there is at Lehigh and in the local community for the arts and what we’re doing,” says Crow, who also serves as professor of practice in the Department of Art, Architecture and Design. “I think people are really hungry to make authentic connections with things that people have created and the ways in which artists have solved problems and challenges in the past. And so, I’m really excited about that and I think that also points to what the future may hold for the art galleries. With that type of substantial growth, I think the sky’s the limit.” Crow started by prioritizing the museum’s educa- tional work and public programming, hiring Stacie Brennan as its first curator of education. In 2019, LUAG brought to Lehigh the acclaimed science-art exhibi- tion “Crochet Coral Reef,” a project by Australian-born twin sisters Margaret Wertheim, a mathematician and scientist, and Christine Wertheim, a visual artist, and their Los Angeles-based Institute For Figuring. At the time, the only other location internationally it could be viewed was Italy’s Venice Biennale. The sisters “work together and with local commu- nities to crochet these enormous and sprawling coral reef structures that are both sculpture and also a visual manifestation addressing issues of climate change, as well as collective impact and collaborative meaning-making,” Crow says. The exhibition also involved other Lehigh departments, including earth and environmental sciences, biology, math- ematics, and gender studies, as well as local community partners, including a local knitting and crochet store that came in on a weekly basis to facilitate drop-in workshops. Another key priority is ensuring that the voices of students are heard in the museum’s work, and that opportunities abound to “help shape the next generation of museum leaders,” says Crow, who also is directing efforts to rebuild the museum studies minor in art, architecture and design. “And we won’t be able to do that if students are on the sidelines or passively watching. Students should learn, and lead, by doing.” An exhibition of photos from the collection of ABC News chief anchor and former Clinton White House advisor George Stephanopoulos titled “Doing Democracy,” which is currently at the LUAG Main “ We want museums to be places of possibility and we want everyone to feel like they belong and to take ownership in the museum.”