Dan Lipcan, Ann C. Pingree Director of PEM’s Phillips Library

Dan Lipcan serves as the Director of PEM’s Phillips Library, located at the James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes Collection Center in Rowley, MA. Since his appointment as Head Librarian in 2019, he has made significant headway in enhancing scholarly access, strengthening the library’s collections and operations and increasing the library’s presence in the museum’s galleries. Prior to his tenure at PEM, Lipcan was Associate Museum Librarian at Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At PEM, Lipcan leads a talented staff charged with preserving and sharing the library’s extensive collection of books, archives, ships’ journals, broadsides, photography and ephemera. Together, they work to transform the highly-respected research library — with its rich and varied global collections — into an innovative and active intellectual hub that supports the overall mission of the museum.

Lipcan has curated or co-curated a number of exhibitions, including the ongoing exhibitions The Salem Witch Trials 1692 and Salem Stories; Draw Me Ishmael: The Book Arts of Moby Dick, on view until March 2026; The Salem Witch Trials: Restoring Justice in 2023; Let None Be Excluded: The Origins of Equal School Rights in Salem in 2022; The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming in 2021; and “My Dear Davey and Chester...”.

Lipcan holds a B.A. in Studio Art (Printmaking) from Allegheny College and an M.L.S. from Queens College-CUNY. In 2017, he was selected to participate in the Columbia Business School Executive Development Program at The Met. He is a member of the Grolier Club, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts and the Art Libraries Society of North America.

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