Key Micro Museum Staff

Samantha Twyford

Samantha Twyford has been the Associate Producer of the Micro Museum since 1996. Her responsibilities in this organization have been to oversee the Spontaneous Combustion Series and the educational programming. She graduated from Hunter College as a Dance Education Major. She has danced with several choreographers over the years, including Twyla Tharp, Jose Limon Dance Company, Tere O’Conner, Patrik Widrig, Ron K. Brown, Nicholas Leichter, Sondra Loring and several other local choreographers. She has also toured Mexico and Prague dancing in other choreographers’ works. Her own choreography has been presented at the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse.

Samantha’s teaching experience began with us at Micro Museum, as assistant and head teacher at the Pierrepont Playground summer art classes. She worked for Young Dancers in Repertory for one year as a dance instructor in several in-school and after-school programs for children ages 5 to 17. Last year Samantha started teaching for the Micro Museum’s visual art after-school program at Public School 261

Samantha has also acquired stage managing and other production work experience with Dancewave’s Kid’s Cafe Festival for the past six years as well as with the New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix for the past three years. She continues to work for these organizations.

Presently Samantha is organizing an alumni dance concert at Hunter College in which she will present her own work. She is employed as a stunt actor working for movies and TV.

Allison Twyford

Allison Twyford was born in Brooklyn and spent most of her years growing up in Carroll Gardens. She is proud to be part of the Micro Museum community for over two years now. In addition to being the Outreach Director for the Micro Museum, she is currently teaching after-school visual arts classes at P.S. 261. Allison also assists with the Micro Museum’s art classes in the summertime at Pierrepont Park.

Graduating from the High School of Performing Arts and majoring in music at Hunter College has encouraged Allison to pursue a singing career. When not working at the Micro Museum, she can be found doing film and television work or in the recording studio. She is currently featured on three albums and performs monthly in the Brooklyn area with her band. Ms. Twyford is thrilled to be working and inspired by such wonderful artists. She is also anticipating the opening of the first floor of the Micro Museum. She is planning on performing and collaborating with other artists and musicians there.

Jane Barber

Jane Barber is a graduate of the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning of the University of Cincinnati. She received a BS in Graphic Design. The university provides cooperative employment

opportunities for their junior and senior students, which is how Jane first came to New York. She had cooperative work experiences in several design firms, including Lippincott + Margulies, Inc. and at Schechter and Luth, Inc. where she learned the basics of corporate identity and creating business materials.

After graduation, Jane was employed by Clairol, Inc. in their creative department, as a package designer. Later she moved to L’Oréal USA as a senior designer in packaging and promotion. At about this time, she married and family came along so she started her own design business based in her home. She continues to consult at Clairol and with other beauty products companies while gradually acquiring more Brooklyn clients. She has designed logos for the Old Stone House Historic Interpretive Center, Bridge/Kaldro Music, and Chickpeas childcare Center, as well as for the Micro Museum. Besides logos, she has designed brochures, banners, stationary, and annual reports for local nonprofit groups and small businesses. Her latest research into eco-friendly materials netted her most recent design project, creating packaging for sets of tree-free and recycled papers, distributed by a small paper company located in Maine

Mike MacIvor

Mike MacIvor is an accomplished songwriter, bassist and supporter of the Micro Museum. His two musical groups CANDIRIA (jazzmetal-fusionists) and GHOSTS OF THE CANAL (avant-garde experimentals) have been collaborating with the Laziza’s for the past 3 years. Recently CANDIRIA was featured in Rolling Stone Magazine, The New York and Los Angeles Times, and Alternative Press, as music of the future. The band has toured Japan, United Kingdom and Continental USA. CANDIRIA’s music was featured in Richard Gere’s blockbuster movie, "The Mothman Prophecies." When not traveling, performing, composing, or recording music, Mike acts as the Micro Museum’s senior art handler and assists with its general maintenance and well being.

Micro Museum Board of Advisors ( Partial List )

Joan Bartolomeo

Joan Bartolomeo joined the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation (BEDC) in 1984. Hired as an Assistant Manager in the Business Services Division, Ms. Bartolomeo assumed gradually increasing responsibilities, becoming Manager for Marketing and Business Services in 1986, a title she held until February, 1989, when she was named President of BEDC.

As President of BEDC, a twenty-two year old not-for-profit corporation dedicated to business development and job creation and retention in Brooklyn, Ms. Bartolomeo directs a staff which provides services in the areas of loan packaging, real estate site identification, commercial and retail development, entrepreneurship, school-to-work transition, red-tape cutting and numerous other activities.

Ms. Bartolomeo is also involved with a number of non-profit organizations in Brooklyn. She serves as President of the board of Brooklyn Psychiatric Centers, Inc.; and is a founding board member of the New York Industrial Retention Network. She has also served as Chair of the Advisory Council of the Business Outreach Center and is on the Advisory Council of the New York City Worker Career Center. Ms. Bartolomeo serves as the Business Manager of the REDAC Mini-Loan Program, which is managed by BEDC and has disbursed 56 loans totaling $1.6 million to small businesses in New York City.

She has been cited for her work with Brooklyn’s small business community by a number of organizations, including the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Caribbean American Media Council, and the Kings County Democratic Organization. She was a member of Brooklyn’s Community Board 10 from 1984 through 1989, and was past Vice President and Secretary of BROOKLYNWORKS, Brooklyn’s business-to-business trade exposition.

Ms. Bartolomeo is a life-long resident of Brooklyn. She obtained her B.S. in Biology and her M.A. in Urban Studies from Long Island University.

 

 

Paulina Kent Dennis

Paulina Kent Dennis was born of Anglo-Scandinavian heritage in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the oldest of five children. She started out as a ballet dancer and choreographer, coming far enough to actually produce some critically well-received concerts in New York City, then became a dance producer, which she continued to pursue to the mid-90s of the last century. Some of the people with whom she studied dance included Alexandra Danilova, Feodor Lensky, Edith Stephen, Robert Joffrey and the great Ruth St. Denis. In the late ’60s, she co-produced, with her husband, Eugene Dildine, the noted and well received "Monday Night Dance Series" at the old Fillmore Theatre in the East Village. She has also been heavily involved in musical theater and opera, having directed, designed, and/or produced a number of operas and musicals for a number of smaller opera companies in the New York area, including New York State Opera Society, Bel Canto Opera, Lubo Opera and the Regina Opera of Brooklyn; and was also a producer with Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston. She went back to school at forty, her two children in tow, to Hunter College in New York, where her mentor was Professor Charles Elson, former House Designer of the Metropolitan Opera. She took an active part in the civil rights and the anti-war movements. In 1981, she became an ordained minister in the Congregational tradition, attending New York Theological Seminary, and has participated in a number of important ecumenical and interfaith conferences, with a special emphasis on Christian responsibility for the Shoah. She writes on religious, legal and social topics in addition to having produced a three-part novel, the first part being called Nadine: the Story of An American Orchestra Conductor, which was a way of creating an artistic world in which she could pose the important philosophical questions that concern all serious persons, artists or not.

Betty Fiebusch

Active in the community for many years, Betty has delivered Meals on Wheels to homebound seniors, served as the Treasurer of the Cobble Hill Coop Nursery School and was elected to Community School Board 15, where she served for 6 years. She is currently teaching community health nursing at NYU, providing training to members of school leadership teams through United Parents Association, co-chairing the tree subcommittee of the Boerum Hill Greening Committee and is also a certified citizen pruner. She is working toward her M.P.A. at Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs. Betty is most proud of her letter to the editor about the Micro Museum’s window, which the New York Times published several years ago.

Rich Hajdu

Rich Hajdu has been in the television industry for the past thirty years. Hajdu started his career in mobile television production, and then went on to become production manager of the current CBS affiliate in Atlanta, GA. Currently he is vice president, sales and marketing for Chyron Corporation, a major supplier of graphics hardware and software for television stations and networks. Previously, he held management positions with a number of companies including Tektronix, Neve, Dynatech, and ADM Technology.

Darryl Hollon

For more than a quarter of a century Darryl Hollon has been employed at Con Edison with a career background in Customer Operations; both in an office setting and as a field supervisor. Over the past five years Mr. Hollon participated in Con Edison’s On-Loan Executive Program and worked in that capacity at the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce from 1997 to now. As an on-loan executive at the Brooklyn Chamber, and the Manager of Member Services, he created events and educational seminars for the over 1,000 Chamber members, consisting of businesses and non-profit organizations. During that time he was, in part, responsible for the Chamber’s 70% member retention rate; more than 10 points higher than the national average in that category.

Mr. Hollon sits on Boards of Business Improvement Districts and Local Development Corporations. He is a member of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s Minority and Women Business Owners Committee and the Economic Development Ports and Transportation Committee. Darryl is involved in projects, working with the Mayor’s office, the Borough President’s office, developers and local and industrial development corporations, to retain and attract industry and commerce to Brooklyn and Queens, that will create permanent jobs and future job growth.

Ann Schofield

Ann E. Schofield is an associate in the Trial Department, resident in McDermott, Will & Emery’s New York office. Ms. Schofield earned her B.A. in English and criminology, cum laude, from the University of Toronto in 1993 and her J.D., magna cum laude, from New York Law School in 1997. While in law school, she received the Milton S. Gould Award for excellence in Law of Contracts and upon graduation, Ms. Schofield was appointed to the National Dean’s List. She is admitted to the New York, Washington, D.C. and Massachusetts bars.

Bette Stoltz

Bette was born and raised in Brooklyn. Mrs. Stoltz, married to Michael Stoltz for 34 years, is also the mother of two grown children who were raised in Brooklyn where they still live. She is a graduate of Brooklyn College and CUNY Baruch where she received a Bachelors degree in Business Administration.

Bette entered the field of Community Development through volunteerism — fundraisers for the PTA of PS 321 (her children’s elementary school) in the mid-1970s when the Park Slope community was being revitalized by the young people of her generation. She got to know the merchants of Seventh Avenue by asking for help for the school and thus coordinated the first big schoolyard fair/festival. This was the era when Street Festivals were just beginning in NYC. The Atlantic Antic had happened once or twice (the only one in Brooklyn).

As a result, the 7th Ave merchants recognized her talent for getting them to contribute to the community and then asked for her help in return. They wanted her to coordinate a Festival there. Bette coordinated (was the original "mother" of) Seventh Heaven which was wildly successful in 1978 (and 1979 &1980). Also (at the request of then Assemblyman Michael Pesce) she coordinated Court Street’s first Festival in 1978. Mrs. Stoltz then began working for The Park Slope Chamber of Commerce (7th Ave) on other projects such as helping to develop the merchant sponsored Little League.

By the early 1980s NYC was starting to fund Commercial Revitalization Programs on shopping streets that had suffered declines through the 1970s. The part of Flatbush Avenue from Atlantic Ave to Grand Army Plaza (North Flatbush Avenue Betterment Committee) received one of the first grants. Known to them from her work on 7th Ave, the North Flatbush group hired Bette as Project Manager. (1981 through 1983). Highlights included the resurrection of the Plaza Twin Cinema from its former XXX rated status, installation of Victorian Street Clocks, installation of the first sets of street light banners and their hardware (now part of the normal "streetscape"), major amounts of building, storefront, and signage façade improvements all along the strip, initiation of the BID development process on North Flatbush Avenue.

Bette spent part of 1984 as consultant to Coney Island (Amusement Area) LDC trying to assess feasibility of establishing a BID there. During that period she helped (as a pro-bono volunteer) Smith Street merchants to write their proposal for Commercial Revitalization funding. When Smith Street received their first grant she was available, applied for and was hired for the Project Manager position there, starting in October 1984.

Mrs. Stoltz built the organization from MASS (Merchants Association of Smith Street), a one employee/single site/single purpose Smith Street Commercial Revitalization Program in 1984 to the multi purpose/multi site, staff of 14, now called the South Brooklyn Local Development Corporation. (They re-incorporated in 1987 as SBLDC to reflect their greater geographic and programmatic scope). Bette’s many accomplishments include: The very successful revitalization of Smith Street; organizing and advocating for over 800 Industrial Area businesses in Red Hook and along the Gowanus Canal Corridor; maintaining an accurate local business database and publishing the Red Hook Works! and Gowanus Works Business to Business Directories; providing technical assistance, employment services, access to incentives. quality of life help, etc. to all South Brooklyn businesses; helping to launch and act as administrator for the business-led Red Hook/Gowanus Chamber of Commerce; launching and continuing to run the Treasures Thrift Emporium Retail Training Program — a paid on-the-job training program which has thus far served 53 women residents of the Red Hook & Gowanus Houses; one of the partners who launched and ran the Red Hook On The Road Commercial Driver Training Program as well as a free of charge Job Placement Service in their Red Hook office connecting local residents with local jobs for over 10 years; and last but not least — a fifteen year history of developing and running innovative School To Work Programs including the SHADOW Spring Semester-long Internship Program in Community School District 15 Middle Schools — over 1250 8th graders have had their first job experience through SHADOW — they also run Culinary Arts, Art/Carpentry and Music after-school programs in local M.S.293, and have partnered with other CBOs in a variety of business/education links programs.

Stuart A. Schulman, Ed. D.

Dr. Schulman is presently a Professor of Tourism and Hospitality at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York. He is also Chairperson, and founding member, of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality. He wrote the initial curriculum proposal and course curricula for what has evolved into a national model for community college based tourism and hospitality programs. He directs the Tourism Research Center; one of the few, according to Community College Weekly, such community colleges based centers, at Kingsborough. Dr. Schulman is a University Technology Fellow at the City University of New York for his work with Virtual Enterprise and the Academy of Travel and Tourism. Dr. Schulman is an Adjunct Professor of Education and Tourism in the graduate school of the George Washington University. He has conducted doctoral seminars, served on doctoral committees and directed satellite doctoral programs for George Washington.

Dr. Schulman has been actively involved in workforce development having been the recipient of a joint FIPSE-European Union grant: Workworld 2000. As the P.I. of this grant, Kingsborough is at the center of a twelve institution network (3 American and 9 European institutions) His work with Virtual Enterprise has also been recognized with a Workforce 2000 grant and the proposed development of a University Center at Kingsborough: The Virtual Enterprise Center. He has developed the Weekend College Now Program, which makes available credit bearing career exploration college courses to high school seniors. He has also been active in various School to Career programs both in the United States and abroad. His activities in this area include a close relationship with both The Academy of Travel and Tourism and The Virtual Enterprise serving as an Advisory Board member of both organizations.

Dr. Schulman’s tourism professional experience includes the operation of such organizations as Ambassadors for Friendship, a joint venture in student travel with The Readers Digest, and The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). He was a founding team member of the I Love New York program, has started and certificated several airlines, and developed marketing and advertising strategies for such varied organizations as: The Australian Tourism Commission, Marriott Hotels, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Royal Air Morocco, Del Webb Hotels and Resorts, and Procter and Gamble.

Dr. Schulman is widely published in various scholarly journals and periodicals. He has also been a columnist in Modern Maturity, Travel Weekly and Choice magazines. He has written a complete set of City Guides for such major European cities as London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. He is on the editorial board of a new, yet to be named journal of tourism research. He has also served as a board member of the International Society of Tourism Educators and is a serving advisory board member of many professional groups and college and university based tourism programs.

Dr. Schulman also served Kingsborough as its Executive Director of Institutional Development and Enrollment Management. In this capacity he energized college-wide enrollment, recruitment and retention efforts and served as liaison to CUNY in these areas.

Dr. Schulman received is Bachelors degree in Accounting and Economics from The City College of New York (BBA, 1962), his Masters in Business Administration from New York University (MBA, 1970), and his Doctorate in Higher Education Administration from The George Washington University (Ed.D, 1988). He, his wife and cat reside in Manhattan.

Robert A. Weiner

Robert A. Weiner is a partner in the Trial Department, resident in McDermott, Will & Emery’s New York office. Mr. Weiner heads the trial practice group in the New York office of McDermott, Will & Emery. He is also the co-chair of McDermott, Will & Emery’s International Arbitration Practice Group.

Mr. Weiner’s trial and appellate practice includes experience before both state and federal courts located throughout the United States as well as arbitrations before the American Arbitration Association and the International Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Weiner has also served as a faculty member of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy.

Mr. Weiner focuses his practice on commercial law, including claims involving the Uniform Commercial Code, insurance law, general contract law, fraud and principal/agency law, state and federal antitrust laws and RICO.

Mr. Weiner also has extensive experience in intellectual property law, including copyright, trademark and unfair competition. Although Mr. Weiner has litigated a variety of general commercial cases involving a spectrum of legal issues, he has developed a special expertise in entertainment and art litigation. Consequently, he has been involved in a number of prominent entertainment and art cases.

During his career, Mr. Weiner has litigated a number of high profile art cases. For example, Mr. Weiner tried the Center Art Galleries case, which was at the time the largest criminal art fraud case ever brought by the U.S. government in Hawaii. Mr. Weiner also represented the art investment concern, Cristallina, S.A., in its internationally publicized suit against Christie’s, a case which lead to the Consumer Affairs Department’s investigation of Christie’s. In another high profile case, he represented the consignor in the "Sotheby’s Jewish Books" case brought by the attorney general of the State of New York against Sotheby’s and the consignor.

Because Mr. Weiner has represented internationally known collectors, insurance companies, artists and brokers as well as one major auction house, he has an intimate working knowledge of art world business practices. As a result of his art law experience, Mr. Weiner was recently appointed by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York as Chapter 11 Trustee for a well-known gallery and gallery owner. Mr. Weiner has also been asked by Christie’s to testify as an expert on art law in a case pending in Canada.

Mr. Weiner has lectured on art law for a variety of organizations including Lloyd’s of London, The American College of Insurance, The American Association of Appraisers and the New York State Bar Association. Mr. Weiner taught art law as an adjunct professor of law at Hofstra University School of Law and has also lectured on auction law for the Practicing Law Institute.

In the areas of television and motion pictures, Mr. Weiner won several victories for King World Productions, Inc., which is a successful syndicator of television shows, including "Wheel of Fortune," "Oprah Winfrey" and "Jeopardy." Among those victories was a directed verdict on King World’s behalf in a case involving antitrust, RICO laws, fraud and breach of contract. Mr. Weiner also represented the Walter Reade Company, Inc., which was one of 26 defendants in a movie distribution antitrust suit. Prior to trial all but three defendants settled. Mr. Weiner acted as lead trial counsel and ultimately sole trial counsel when the remaining two defendants settled during the trial. A jury verdict was obtained in Walter Reade’s favor after a ten-week trial.

Mr. Weiner is a member of the Bar of the State of New York, as well as the bars of the United States District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, Northern and Western Districts of New York, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second, Third, Sixth, Ninth and District of Columbia Circuits; the United States Tax Court and the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Weiner earned his bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1969. He received his law degree from Columbia University School of Law in 1972.

 

 Return to About Micro Museum