For Kimaada Le Gendre, becoming a teacher was not what she planned, but things changed and that’s a good thing.
“Both my parents are teachers. A lot of my family members— aunts, uncles, all of that — were teachers. … when I went to college, I definitely wanted to carve my own path,” said Le Gendre.
It was when she attended law school that the interest in education was sparked for the Queens native. Inspired by an environmental education class, Le Gendre connected her love of policy to the world of education she already knew, leading her to pitching the school where her mother worked — the Cambria Center for the Gifted Child — for an opportunity to teach environmental education.
The program was a success, and the principal of the school asked Le Gendre to stay to teach the class with an emphasis on teaching through the colonized lens. She already had experience with educating students in that manner while teaching at its sister school, the Cambria School of Excellence.
“It was a beautiful and rare opportunity … to really create curriculum that was rooted in social justice,” she said.
When Le Gendre joined the Queens Museum in January 2020, months before the COVID pandemic hit, she was an education manager. She focused on the adjustment of the museum’s youth programming, using her background in education to create a curriculum and curate a program that would benefit teens and their engagement with the museum.
When the pandemic hit, Le Gendre was faced with the challenge of maintaining engagement with youth through other means, using remote platforms like Zoom to maintain a connection with people.
“We wanted to make sure that the humanity aspect of it wasn’t lost because now I’m staring at you on a screen,” she said.
When the pandemic ended, many of the programs Le Gendre implemented through COVID continued, although now on a hybrid schedule to accommodate the change in engagement that it created. Le Gendre would remain education manager until July 2021, when she was named Director of Education. In May 2024, she was appointed Director of Education and Community engagement. The new position came with a change in the department as well, handling not only education programs but also exhibits related to public programs, as well as cultural and community events. The increase in programs came with the responsibility of maintaining the relationships, which Le Gendre said is important to keep.
“We definitely believe in trust building,” Le Gendre said. “We work with a lot of amazing community partners, and those community partnerships don’t happen overnight, this trust-building that has to happen over time. And we take those relationships very seriously, because sometimes they reach parts of the borough that we [can’t] reach.”
Le Gendre takes pride in the community aspect of the museum, citing it as one of their biggest strengths. The museum, located in Flushing, is locally driven, not guided by tourism like other museums in the city. Le Gendre is aware of the lack of awareness of the museum and wants to change that.
“I started realizing the hyper-local community knew the Queens Museum, but folks in South Jamaica and Rockaway and stuff like that, they didn’t know,” she said. “A big part of me also wanting to be there was this idea of ‘Okay, we need to reach other folks who are in Queens’ so that they feel like this is their space, too.”
Le Gendre emphasized the museum’s engagement with the community and continued efforts to maintain trust to build something that is a reflection of not only the museum, but of the neighborhood it resides in. With the implementation of programs such as the Queens Teens Institute for Art & Social Justice, Le Gendre understands the trust of the community is earned, not expected.
Le Gendre’s experience in working in a museum brought up acknowledgment of an arguably elitist culture that can come with that environment, making it easier to exclude groups of people who may not have had a prior connection to the arts.
“There are a lot of folks who think, ‘Oh my gosh, working in an art museum, you have to have this.’ I did not once take an art class in college, because my focus was so different. It’s one of those things where you can definitely take the traditional journey, but you can also meander, and you can also come from different viewpoints.”
In turn, Le Gendre is committed to holding the museum accountable for engaging in the community. In her current position, she said her work deals with more interaction with the community, granting her the ability to let members of the community feel welcome, not put off by the institution.
“I think it’s also this idea that we are a very big, scary, intimidating building,” she said. “People sometimes don’t want to come inside because they’re like, ‘Oh, a museum. Ooh. I don’t know if I’m gonna understand these shows, these exhibitions,’ and so there’s that part of it.
“A lot of the [programs] that come out of our department — accountability, intention are definitely at the heart of it, because there’s an emotional labor that goes to creating, facilitating, and maintaining these types of programs, because they’re not surface-based programs,” Le Gendre continued.
While the museum continues to cater to the public, Le Gendre acknowledged concerns regarding the future of museums amid continued cuts to funding for institutions such as libraries and museums during the Trump administration. Despite that concern, Le Gendre focuses on alternative solutions to the lack of funding. She and Queens Museum president Sandy Tallant believe in developing ambitious programs without letting money dictate their ambition.
“You develop it through ideas and things like that, and then you chase the money, right? Then you’re looking for grants if you believe in something, if there’s a story to be told, if there’s an impact to be made, then you hope to get a specific type of money, whether it’s through brands, individuals, institutions, to then pilot these programs, pitch these programs, maintain these programs,” she said.
Le Gendre’s unwavering hope in her work is one of the many things that drive her to continue her efforts in community engagement. As a daughter of Queens, the job is more than just fulfilling.
“While I’m not from the hyper-local Corona community, when we do programs that folks from South Jamaica or Southeastern Queens are from, I feel very much a kinship when we partner with certain schools out there or when we have certain teens who sign up from certain neighborhoods,” Le Gendre said. “I really feel like the work that I set out to do to kind of get this work out in Queens is happening day by day, slowly but surely.”
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story listed Kimaada Le Gendre as an education manager at the Queens Museum from 2020 until 2024. In actuality, she was education manager from 2020-2021, when she became Director of Education. She was promoted to Director of Education and Community Engagement in May 2024.