Stuart Lilie, Fort Ticonderoga Vice President of Public History was recently awarded the Museum Association of New York (MANY) Individual Achievement Award of Merit for 2020. The Award Ceremony will take place on March 30, 2020, at the Hilton Albany in Albany, NY.
Lilie joined the Fort Ticonderoga leadership staff in the spring of 2011. He oversees the Public History department, which reaches nearly 70,000 visitors annually through daily programs and events. Outreach programs engage an additional 3,000+ students in classrooms across the northeast annually. Through leadership by example, Lilie drives for high standards in historical accuracy of content, authenticity, visitor engagement and customer service. He upholds accountability and responsibility for ensuring the delivery of Fort Ticonderoga’s mission every day.
“It’s an honor every day to serve Fort Ticonderoga’s mission through interpretive programs, while proactively planning the delivery of these programs into the future,” said Lilie. “The peoples of Fort Ticonderoga’s layered story provide the opportunity and duty as staff to constantly grow our knowledge and skills.”
“With constant drive and always seeing opportunities in challenges, Lilie provides focus and leadership to staff, while providing a coherent, thought-provoking experience for visitors,” said Beth Hill, Fort Ticonderoga president & CEO. “Each year, Fort Ticonderoga reinvents itself by exploring through living history and exhibits a specific year of the site’s 18th-century history. The year-by-year approach to history, which Stuart pioneered and leads, forces constant growth and refreshing of interpretive skills and topics in the Public History department. This interpretive model is unique internationally and allows us to take a deep dive into the real history of Ticonderoga, develop new and compelling ways to tell that story, and encourage visitors to return to Ticonderoga each year.”
Lilie has more than 15 years in the museum and historic sites profession and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
About Fort Ticonderoga:
Welcoming visitors since 1909, Fort Ticonderoga preserves North America’s largest 18th-century artillery collection, 2,000 acres of historic landscape on Lake Champlain, and Carillon Battlefield, and the largest series of untouched Revolutionary War era earthworks surviving in America. As a multi-day destination and the premier place to learn more about our nation’s earliest years and America’s military heritage, Fort Ticonderoga engages more than 75,000 visitors each year with an economic impact of more than $12 million annually and offers programs, historic interpretation, boat cruises, tours, demonstrations, and exhibits throughout the year, and is open for daily visitation May through October. Fort Ticonderoga is supported in part through generous donations and with some general operating support made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.