Jim was appointed Curator of the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum in November 2005. He is a native of Minnesota and a graduate of St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota with a degree in English and a minor in Education. He took up bonsai as a hobby while working as a high school teacher. In 1996 he moved to Washington D.C. and began volunteering at the Museum. He assumed the position of Assistant Curator for Plant Collections in 2002 and in 2005 he studied penjing and the origins of bonsai at the Shanghai Botanical Garden. He is an active member of the Brookside Bonsai Club of the Potomac Bonsai Association.
Photo: Museum Staff
Kathleen Emerson-Dell – Assistant Curator for Artifact Collections
Ked studied Art History at the University of Maryland and completed graduate studies at the University of Michigan in Japanese Art History and Asian Art History. She received a Freer Fellowship to study Japanese Ceramics at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and a Japan Foundation Fellowship for advanced Japanese language studies in Tokyo Japan. As the Japanese specialist at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, she catalogued the Japanese collections and authored publications on Japanese decorative arts of the Meiji-period. She was appointed Assistant Curator in February 2006.
Photo: Museum Staff
Aarin Packard – Assistant Curator for Plant Collections
Aarin is a California native and attended California State University Fullerton where he majored in Anthropology. He also received a Masters degree in Museum Studies from The George Washington University in Washington D.C. Aarin was first exposed to bonsai at a very young age by his father. Later in high school he studied and worked on bonsai with his close friends as a hobby. Before coming to the Museum he worked for the Institute of Museum and Library Services and he interned in the Botany Department at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. He assumed the position of Assistant Curator in June 2006.
Amy Forsberg
Amy is the new gardener for the Museum. She is a native of Maryland, with a B.A. in Dramatic Arts from St. Mary's College of Maryland and 7 years of experience as a theatre costumer in Washington DC. In 2001 Amy changed careers and entered the field of horticulture. She was a full-time intern in the Arboretum's National Herb Garden for one year and completed 24 credits of horticulture classes at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate School. Other gardening jobs followed, including 2 years at the U.S. Botanic Garden in downtown Washington D.C. In 2006, she returned to the National Arboretum as a gardener in the Asian Collections. Now, she is thrilled to work in the Museum and is looking forward to learning about the world of bonsai.
