Karen Soniat, the newly-appointed President and Executive Director of the Louisiana Art & Science Museum.
When Karen Soniat takes the reins at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum as President and Executive Director on May 1, she will be just the fourth—all of them women—to have held the position since the museum’s founding in 1962. Those are big shoes to fill but Soniat, a lifelong Louisianan whose career has included chapters as an educator, an administrator, a fundraiser, and an advocate, possesses experiences and talents that make her uniquely qualified to lead an institution that stands at the intersection of art, science, and education.
Soniat grew up in Ascension Parish and, after graduating from LSU with a Master of Education degree, became an educator, teaching art and “enrichment” (which later came to be called “gifted”) classes to students in the East Baton Rouge and Ascension Parish school systems. “There was an interdisciplinary approach,” she said. “In many ways we were doing the kinds of things that LASM promotes,” she observed. In 1981, Soniat moved into a position as a Senior Education Administrator with the Louisiana Department of Education, developing curricula and assessments, and promoting instruction of science and math statewide. “I was working with teachers, parents, and advocacy groups to develop programs, then bringing all that knowledge together—first as an educator, then as a teacher instructor and trainer,” she said. “We were taking knowledge and bringing it to the entire state.”
The Department of Education gave Soniat her introduction to fundraising work, when the state board of education created a matching fund program that enabled collaborations with large corporate concerns to found educational nonprofits. “We were working with businesses that cared deeply about the public schools, and I could see how much difference that could make,” Soniat said. Stints at Southeastern Louisiana University, where she helped to re-establish the football program; and LSU Law Center, where during a seventeen-year tenure she built a modern fundraising program, developed an alumni relations program, and restarted the LSU Law magazine, followed. In August, 2021 she joined the National WWII Museum in New Orleans as Associate Vice President for Annual Giving and Membership.
Now, Soniat brings her decades of experience in education, administration, fundraising, and non-profit work to bear on the Louisiana Art & Science Museum. In the near term, her priorities lie in analyzing how the institution’s mission is put into practice, while meeting with donors and partners in the education, business, and industrial communities to understand their vision and priorities, and growing the membership base. In the longer term, Soniat sees opportunities to expand the reach of LASM’s educational programs, capitalize on the presence of the state-of-the-art Irene W. Pennington Planetarium, and develop partnerships with other regional and national museums to enhance LASM’s appeal as a regional destination. She is also excited by the possibility of bringing a blockbuster exhibit—such as the Mississippi Museum of Art’s recent Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds—to Baton Rouge. Soniat’s experience at the National WWII Museum demonstrated the potential of a major traveling exhibition for capturing public imagination, enhancing visitation, and growing the museum’s community. Is it ambitious? Certainly. But with a diverse collection, a state-of-the-art planetarium, broad corporate and community support, and a sixty-two-year legacy as an iconic educational cultural institution to build upon, Soniat is confident about where she can take LASM. “I hope I’m the right person at the right time to bring this museum to its full potential,” she said, “and to build on what my predecessors have achieved.”
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