Loading ...Arab American National Museum Director to Leave after 5 Years at Helm
SOURCE: CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS
BY: ANNALISE FRANK
Devon Akmon will leave his post as director of the Arab American National Museum after spending the past 13 years — right out of graduate school — with the Dearborn institution.
Akmon’s last day is May 31. A national search is underway to select the next leader of the museum, the first and only of its kind focused on Arab-American history and culture. It operates under the Dearborn-based nonprofit Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, or ACCESS.
“It’s taken a significant portion of my professional life,” the 41-year-old said, adding that he’s been contemplating a move for several years. “I love what I do, so trying to define a definitive end was getting harder and harder and harder.”
He said he is in “conversations with a handful” of organizations on possibilities for his next move, but it’s still early in the exploration process.
Over Akmon’s five-year term, the museum has expanded its national presence while aiming to dig deeper regional roots.
Recent exhibitions, including one celebrating U.S. service of Arab-Americans, have traveled across the country to the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka, Kan., and other venues.
Locally, the museum has expanded into an annex space adjacent to its building at 13624 Michigan Ave. to provide “a third space for community” to gather, Akmon said. It has also continued to scale its annual Arab Film Festival, launched an artists’ residency program and grown its oral history collection.
“Our community-based approach, to be responsive to those we serve, that’s been with us since our inception,” he said. “We’re refining that approach in new ways. Forcing us to think about the role of our institution as not just a place of contemplation and discovery, but as a place that advances the wellness of a community.”
That means navigating an extremely diverse Arab-American community, and creating a sense of wider shared experience by connecting Arab-American issues with those of other groups. Akmon cited an example: The museum in the fall explored the ramifications of executive orders during a talk for the 75th anniversary of the order that forced Japanese-Americans into internment camps during World War II.
During his term, Akmon has had to deal with divisive discourse on immigration, including that which came from President Donald Trump’s executive order last year that blocked travelers from several Muslim-majority nations. He said it hasn’t changed the museum’s mission, but it has required a “heightened need” for platforms to dispel misinformation.
Akmon earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Michigan State University and a master’s in historic preservation planning from Eastern Michigan University before joining the museum in 2005. He was promoted to deputy director in 2009 and director in 2013. He was a 2013 Crain’s Forty Under 40 honoree.
