In 2011, Rebecca Fitzsimmons was a University of South Florida graduate student scanning early pictures of Florida for the Matheson History Museum.
In 2015, she is now the museum’s newest curator and archivist.
Fitzsimmons was finishing her grant-funded tenure at George A. Smathers Libraries when she got the call from Betsy Albury, the president of the museum’s board of directors. She accepted the job and its $42,500 yearly salary on one condition: She could delay her start until Sept. 1 to finish a project. They agreed, as long as she began curating for an exhibit they hoped to complete by the beginning of September.
"I was very excited," Fitzsimmons said. "It’s a really great museum and in the several decades it’s been around, they’ve done a tremendous job."
Until September, Fitzsimmons balanced two projects. By day, she worked with Smathers’ "Panama and the Canal" collection as the interim exhibits coordinator, updating records and choosing pieces of the exhibit. By night, she worked on the newest Matheson exhibit, "Saving the Sunshine State," and researched women leaders from 20th-century Florida.
Fitzsimmon and the new exhibit made their debut at Matheson on Sept. 1. Under Fitzsimmon’s direction, the free exhibit examines the contributions of six Floridian women, including Zora Neale Hurston and Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and includes additional features such as tours and readings for which visitors can pay from $5 to $60.
"Each one of these women impacted the state in such profound ways that, really, the Florida that you look around and see now is largely the result of the kind of work they were doing," Fitzsimmons said.
Peggy Macdonald, executive director at the museum, said the exhibit was important because Florida’s history — in particular that of women — tends to be overlooked.
With regards to the environmental activism of the 20th century, she said, most people look toward men like Teddy Roosevelt without accounting for the impact women made.
"Women were the foot soldiers of the conservation movement," she said.
Beyond the exhibit, one of Fitzsimmons’ primary goals as head curator is to foster more engagement and dialogue among her audience.
"Otherwise, you go back to that place where museums are sort of this quiet, almost church-like space," she said. "Where you go in and you don’t talk, and you just read and look, and walk and leave."
For Macdonald, Fitzsimmons’ hiring couldn’t have come at a more ideal time, even though she had to share her with a library for a couple of months beforehand.
She thinks Fitzsimmons’ expertise and dedication will help propel the museum to the next level.
"I thought she was worth waiting for," she said.
