Orlando Museum of Art

As a Midwesterner who grew up across the river from St. Louis, Missouri, Connie Brand grew to love art at the St. Louis Art Museum where she went with her family as a child. Her enjoyment of art resurfaced in her college years. “I minored in art, but I was more interested in art history. I faked jewelry, painting and drawing class,” she recalls. During her college years at the University of Illinois and Western Illinois University, where she received her bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education, she experienced the turmoil of Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement. She realized that she was not a conservative nor a liberal and preferred rather to follow the beat of her own drum, adhering strictly to her mother’s advice: “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Despite her strong independence, she is more than willing to share her ideas, opinions, and time, and she has made this clear as a longtime volunteer with the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA). She has been on the board of the Acquisition Trust, which is a volunteer support group that funds the acquisition of contemporary American art for OMA; on the Executive Committee of the Associates, who created 1st Thursdays; a member of Friends of American Art, Art Society, Docent Corps and the Ambassadors; on the OMA’s Board of Directors of the Volunteer Council, serving as Chairperson, for many years; and served as an Ex-Officio member of the OMA Board of Trustees; plus many other positions, such as recruiting volunteers for the OMA’s fundraising event, Palette for the Senses.

However, she recalls her work as a docent with great fondness. “Being a docent is one of the best volunteer jobs you can get in this Museum because there is nothing like taking a child’s mind and sparking it. I have had some wild experiences being a docent,” she recalls. She has given tours to hearing- and sight-challenged people. “I had to use the other senses to describe the artwork.” She also described performance art to young adults in one of her tours by having the students act out the artwork. Her most difficult tour was for a group of autistic children.

Because of her extensive volunteer involvement with the OMA, she was given a special award in 2005 called Volunteer of the Decade. She was given this prestigious award because she created the volunteer manual, extensively revised the by-laws for the Volunteer Council, created the lapel pin volunteer hours award program, which encouraged volunteers to log in their hours for grant purposes and fostered a sense of community amongst the volunteers, and supervised volunteers in various capacities. Perhaps a deeper reason why she was recognized is because she regularly stresses the importance of volunteers as an invaluable resource for the OMA. On a more personal level, she is an ambassador for the OMA, who shares her interests for the arts and art education with everyone she meets.

She introduced herself to the President of the volunteers at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College during the time she was Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Volunteer Council at the OMA. Together they decided to meet for lunch with volunteers in charge of volunteers at the Morse Museum and the Maitland Art Center. “We enjoyed each other’s personalities and the experience, so I asked them if they wanted to meet again. They said yes and we agreed to meet every other month. That was ten years ago and we have been meeting ever since” Connie says. Their group consists of over 40 members and it is restricted to volunteers in charge of volunteers. They call themselves the For ART Group. The purpose of the For ART Group is to network and exchange information. She does the main organizing for this group and the other members take turns hosting the lunches.

Presently, she is very involved in promoting and organizing opera in Central Florida. After the bankruptcy of the Orlando Opera, Connie helped form the Florida Opera Theatre (FOT). FOT has filed for non-profit status, created by-laws, organized trips to Opera Tampa, created fundraisers and assisted the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in promoting concert opera in Central Florida.

She has contributed all of this time, effort and expertise to these various programs while dealing with an autoimmune disease diagnosed as Sjogren’s syndrome. She also keeps busy being a wife, mother, a stepmother and grandmother. Simply put, her presence has helped enrich the Orlando community, and clearly this is someone who has taken their love of the arts to the next level.