This is your museum. Welcome!
Museums offer us an environment in which people, ideas, life experiences and feelings can come together across time, place and cultures. We seek out art and creative expression to feel grounded, to feel awe and to question and understand who we are and who we can become through our shared humanity.
It is a tremendous honor to lead PEM, an organization whose focus on creativity, cultural understanding and innovation is more relevant and needed than ever. This is a pivotal moment for museums to stimulate conversation and connection with empathy, courage and credibility. I invite you to explore our complex, rapidly changing world through the power of the arts and cultural expression.
I look forward to seeing you in the galleries — or at a virtual event — soon!
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan
The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo
Executive Director and CEO
Latest from the director
Director's Dialogue Series
Fireside Chats with Lynda Roscoe Hartigan: Episode 4
Further reading
Inside the country's oldest still-operating museum
Director's Dialogue Series
Fireside Chats with Lynda Roscoe Hartigan: Episode 3
Director's Dialogue Series
Fireside Chats with Lynda Roscoe Hartigan: Episode 2
Director's Dialogue Series
Fireside Chats with Lynda Roscoe Hartigan
New audio tour
PEM in an Hour
Director's Dialogue Series
Miranda Massie
Further reading
Guiding a Human-centered vision
Director's Dialogue Series
Bernie Krause and Hervé Chandès
Director's Dialogue Series
Cannupa Hanksa Luger and Marie Watt
Director's Dialogue Series
Oleksandra Kovalchuk
Blog
A word with PEM Director Lynda Roscoe Hartigan
PEMcast
Drawn to Place: PEMcast 28
Mission, Vision & Values
PEM’s mission is to celebrate outstanding artistic and cultural creativity by collecting, stewarding and interpreting objects of art and culture in ways that increase knowledge, enrich the spirit, engage the mind and stimulate the senses.
Museum History
The roots of our museum date to the 1799 founding of the East India Marine Society, an organization of Salem ship captains and supercargoes.
Leadership at PEM
Meet and read about PEM’s executive team and view the museum’s list of Trustees and Board of Advisors.
Curators
Read and learn about the curators who oversee PEM’s collections.