Andréa Purnell joined the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) in 2017 and has served as the Manager of Audience Development since 2020 where she spearheaded engagement strategies designed to increase and expand the museum’s audience profile. Purnell now serves as the Manager of Community Collaborations where she works with colleagues and collaborators throughout the Museum and St. Louis region to develop, implement, and evaluate active community collaborations and accessibility programs.
Her major contributions at SLAM include serving as co-curator of groundbreaking exhibition The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, engaging as a key curatorial liaison to the community during the 2018 Kehinde Wiley: Saint Louis exhibition, overseeing the development of the 2018 exhibition Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds speakers bureau contributing to outreach to over 3000 people, the co-development of the Staff Programming Opportunity Team, a program that encourages staff input and promotes diverse thinking using institutional collaboration with fresh perspectives, and the inception and implementation of the Five Pillars Community Engagement Initiative, a city-wide project in conjunction with The Culture aimed to engage communities beyond the museum walls using multi-disciplinary presentations inspired by the five pillars of hip-hop.
Before working at SLAM Andréa built a career facilitating arts engagement to empower communities from rehabilitation settings to schools. Much of her work in these arenas has focused on how the arts can advance public health disparities and improve well-being outcomes. Some of Purnell’s previous experience includes having worked as Communications and Artistic Director with UMSL’s Missouri Institute of Mental Health where she employed knowledge of the arts to educate the community on matters related to mental health by developing creative outreach programs and establishing collaborative partnerships with community stakeholders and as an instructor with the St. Louis City Division of Corrections, where Purnell developed and facilitated cognitive behavioral therapy groups for female and male inmates.
In addition, Purnell has maintained a successful artistic career as an actor, writer, director, and stage manager with the Groundlings Theatre in Los Angeles. She has performed with the San Diego Repertory Theatre, St. Louis Black Rep, New Line Theatre, New Jewish Theatre, and as Roxanne in St. Louis Shakespeare Company’s Cyrano De Bergerac. She is most proud of her performance in Lyon, France with La’ Hors De where she depicted an American citizen from Pruitt-Igoe. She has appeared in numerous local broadcasts and continues to be actively involved in media relations.
Purnell holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication studies from Fontbonne University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Arts Management and Leadership from Webster University, a diversity and inclusion certificate from Cornell University, and serves as the appointed Regional Arts Commission of Saint Louis and the Florissant Disability Awareness Commission.