History alumna becomes an Art Guardian

If you want to make her day, ask Katie Steffan about her box work. She’s a self-taught archival box constructor and proud of it. Steffan is one of an eight-person team working at Guardian, which opened on W. St. Paul Avenue in 2017. Her education was well-suited to the task; Steffan graduated from UWM in 2015 with her Master’s in Public History and a certificate in Museum Studies. She completed internships at the Milwaukee Public Museum and met Guardian founder Shannon when she took an internship cataloging his personal collection, a treasure-trove of roughly 5,000 pieces of art.