A life at the museum

Hilary Cronheim went from being turned down for an internship at the USGA Golf Museum and Library in 2010 to being named its director less than a decade later.
She still can’t believe it, either.
Sure, her exposure to golf was limited when she applied initially — she had only been playing infrequently for two years at that point — but her experience with museums was anything but.
Cronheim, 38,  first interned at the Terra Museum of American Art near her Chicago-area home at age 15. She visited museums throughout Europe on family vacations, studied in Italy and France, and spent many days at the Art Institute of Chicago while completing numerous internships. She even used her free time while at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey to write and self-publish a gallery guide for students to the Princeton University Art Museum.

“I was a big museum nerd for as long as I can remember,” said Cronheim, who studied art history as an undergrad at Cornell University and earned a master’s in art, art history and visual studies at Duke Universit...