Scholarship Voice: Keith MacKay

I spent high school in Grand Rapids, moving there when I was in ninth grade, to a house on NW 2nd Avenue near Crystal Lake in town. My dad was a high school teacher at Floodwood, and my mom was the director of Northland Recovery Center. While I have lived away from Northern Minnesota since I left for college, Itasca County is beautiful and it inspires me every time I visit my mom and brother who still live there.

In high school, I was a voracious reader! If I wasn’t in my room reading, I was living at the Reif Performing Arts Center and at the Grand Rapids Public Library. I am forever grateful to all those who keep those institutions strong and accessible.

When I graduated in 1997, I headed to the University of Minnesota––Twin Cities where I got a B.A. in Art History. While I have spent 25 years working in preservation and museum organizations, younger me––out visiting historical sites like the Alexander Ramsey House with my dad or the Minneapolis Institute of Art with my grandparents––never realized that people worked in them.

That realization came when it was time to register for my first semester of college classes. This was the late 1990’s and the early days of the internet, meaning we had a large catalog of all the courses in every degree. I started in English but was immediately struck by the number of classes that were called “Art History”.

So in my second semester, I enrolled in Survey One by Gabriel Weisberg and an American Art History class by Karal Ann Marling. These two were influential art historians and I was fortunate to study under their tutelage. I was hooked after that semester and changed my major from English to Art History. Over the next couple years, I interned at the Minnesota Historical Society and had a work-study program at the Weisman Art Museum.

I went on to get a Master’s Degree at the Corcoran Art + Design School associated with George Washington University in Washington D.C. and during graduate school, I worked at the White House Historical Society where my master’s thesis was published. Today I work at The Valentine: The Richmond (Virginia) History Center and enjoy giving walking tours of Hollywood Cemetery through The Valentine.

My three decades in art history were made possible by my four years of Blandin Foundation scholarships. My mom told me about the application, and I thought it was so generous for an organization to support local students’ education and cultural enrichment. Like most students, I still graduated with loans to repay, so it was nice to have some funds that I didn’t have to pay back. But more than that, the aid helped me fund a course in Renaissance Art in Florence, Italy, one semester!

What has served me and what I would advise young people today is to be adventurous and curious with the world around you: try out new classes, new books, hobbies, or groups to join. After 30 years in the same profession I continue to learn more every year. And the friends I made my freshman year I am still close with, though we live all around the world now.

Be sure to give back and serve others. It’s the only way to step out of yourself and yet be thankful for your life.

And maybe as importantly, remember that your lenders do want their loans back: Look carefully at the cost for tuition! You can thrive and grow in any higher education situation so don’t shy from starting at a less expensive school or trade school. Also, think of the job or profession you might enjoy, and research other related or aligned jobs. Don’t be shy! Ask someone who has a kind of job you might like “when you grow up” if you could sit down with them and learn from them.