Alum's Jewish Museum Milwaukee job is a marriage of majors

Cassie Sacotte just spent the weekend in a circus tent in the name of art.

Surrounded by hula-hooping lessons and face-painting, dancing lessons and balloon animals, Sacotte was in her element as the special programs and events coordinator at Jewish Museum Milwaukee. The event was the “Big Top Chagall Shebang,” a circus-themed afternoon to celebrate the Museum’s current exhibit, “Chagall’s ‘Le Cirque.’”

“It was a great time. Everybody seemed really happy, which is what I was concerned with,” Sacotte said with a laugh.

That’s her job: Create programming for the museum that will draw the Milwaukee community to the museum and keep them interested and learning once they arrive.

Art history and Jewish studies alum Cassie Sacotte is the special programs and events coordinator at Jewish Museum Milwaukee. Photo courtesy of Cassie Sacotte.

Jewish Museum Milwaukee is an organization dedicated to telling the stories of the Jews of southeastern Wisconsin and in doing so, making connections between various communities throughout their own histories. The museum hosts three to four exhibitions each year, and Sacotte is responsible for creating additional programming and events around those exhibits to help visitors connect with the information.

It’s the perfect job for a woman who double-majored in art history and Jewish studies. Sacotte graduated from UWM with her Bachelor’s degree in 2010. She was drawn to the majors for the same reason she was drawn to UWM: There was nothing like it in the small town where she grew up.

“It was super-duper tiny. There wasn’t a whole lot of city life or culture around,” she recalled. “I took a trip to Europe in high school, and it really opened my eyes to the world beyond what I had experienced in my tiny, tiny town. I also, in that tiny town, grew up with only Catholics and Lutherans around me. There were absolutely no Jews.”

Though she is not Jewish herself, Sacotte connected with Jewish culture and religion and loved her classes in the major, as well as her art history courses. When she graduated, “I knew at that point that I wasn’t done learning. I hadn’t even scratched the surface of what art history is,” she said.

So, she attended graduate school at UWM, earning a Master’s in art history in 2013. She worked at an art gallery and then an art consulting company before she heard about a rare opening on the Jewish Museum Milwaukee’s staff in 2016.

“I had imagined working here when I was in school, but I had never thought it was a possibility,” Sacotte admitted. “Now that I’m here, I’ve done a lot of work to make it known that we exist and our programs are really valuable.”

Sacotte has designed programming around Jewish Museum Milwaukee's current exhibit, "Chagall's Le Cirque," which runs through Sept. 8.

Under her leadership, Jewish Museum Milwaukee has seen its regular program attendance triple, and the events she plans occasionally sell out of tickets. Sacotte has planned programs around a variety of exhibits. For instance, when the “Allied in the Fight” exhibit came to the museum to showcase how some Jewish activists worked alongside black leaders during the Civil Rights movement, Sacotte organized a panel discussion with Wisconsin’s fair housing activists, planned a Freedom Seder to celebrate each group’s freedom from slavery, and screened a film called “From Swastika to Jim Crow,” among other activities.

“I really enjoy doing programs that help take our audience’s education further and give them more information beyond what’s presented in the exhibits,” she said.

For each event, Sacotte is not only responsible for putting together the activity, but also planning every detail, from catering to advertising. She was ready to handle the responsibility thanks to the lessons she learned at UWM.

“Grad school prepared me to deal with the research and the intensity of an everyday museum job, and really helped teach me how to work with other people,” she said. “[Jewish Studies professor] Rachel Baum in particular was a huge resource in teaching me the difference between being a student and being a professional.”

For a full list of special events and programming planned by Sacotte, visit the Jewish Museum Milwaukee’s events calendar.

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science