George Boden Harris

At Johns Hopkins, Boden Harris serves as a lecturer in the MA in Museum Studies program.

A professional museum collections manager and curator with over 25 years of experience in museums, primarily in collections care and exhibit development, Harris has a diverse set of interests from history to natural history to environmental conservation to the history of science. He currently works as the director of collections for the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. As head of the collections department, he oversees overall care of the museum’s primarily natural history collections and plays a significant role in the creation of exhibits. Recently, he has led the development and reinstallation of several long-term exhibits at the Fairbanks Museum and initiatives to examine collections in new ways. This has included x-raying and 3D scanning collections, leading to temporary and long-term exhibits. He previously worked as the Fairbanks Museum’s registrar. He also has worked at the Maine Historical Society and as collections manager for the American Precision Museum and Billings Farm and Museum.

Harris has worked on many aspects of collections care, including helping to develop and implement Vermont’s Museum Abandoned Property Law. He has co-chaired sessions at both the Vermont Historical Society’s Annual Meeting and the New England Museum Association’s Annual Conference on a variety of topics. He also works on many projects requiring the interpretation of museum ethics, primarily focused on collections care and use.

Harris holds a BA in History, Society, and Culture from Colby-Sawyer College in New London, New Hampshire and a MA in Museums and Collections Management from Bournemouth University in Bournemouth, England.