Very excited to have been awarded a Sachs Program for Arts Innovation grant to develop Designing Motherhood as an open-source curriculum.
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Very excited to say that our Designing Motherhood has received a 2021 Graham Foundation grant, one of the highest honors in our field.
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Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births is now open at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. The show runs May 6, 2021-May 9, 2022.
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Very grateful to have received a grant award from the wonderful Center for Craft to research my next book on who defines craft in the US, and how.
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There is broad consensus that giving credit for exhibition making (and any other form of making) is positive and useful. Here are some collaboratively-made open-source guidelines.
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I wrote about my late mum and motherhood for one of my favorite journals in the world, Riposte. Read it here.
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I had the delight of speaking at the Poster House, New York, for their College Night in November. I spoke about salary transparency and the future of museums. See the full program here — one of the most enjoyable I’ve done thanks to great co-panelists Nico Wheadon and La Tanya Autry, and excellent PH moderators…
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How might we address issues in maternal health with some of the same creative problem-solving tools used by designers? How are communities coming together to rethink maternity from an equity perspective? Amber and I participated in a conversation about labor, health, and ways design tools can help us reimagine the future of motherhood. We were…
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I am proud to have been invited to join the committee of Advisors to the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts in Boston, a vital hub for craft practice founded in Boston in 1676. Earlier in the fall, I helped organize a two-part series on craft an racial equity with artist and educator Alison…
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In spring 2020, at a moment in time when so much changed in the world so quickly, the MFA’s Department of Contemporary Art wanted to center living artists by celebrating the necessity and relevance of their work. The result was a series of insightful and warm conversations, captured in this book designed by Nick Massarelli,…
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This summer I spoke with Raphaël Koenig and Camilo Godoy for artpress about the state of the U.S. art field. Read it here.
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In August, I was lucky enough to speak with the smart fashion historian and curator Keren Ben-Horin about fashion and design, as well as how we both use material culture in education and in our scholarship.
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We have a cover for the Designing Motherhood book (and a sneak peek at the inside…)! C/o Natasha Chandani and Lana Carver, two of the wonderful design minds behind Clanada.
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As we could not access the MFA craft galleries during the pandemic, I decided to create a craft exhibition in the only gallery open during the pandemic, Boston’s Shelter in Place Gallery run by the amazing artist Eben Haines.
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Biodesign has gained public recognition through its close relationship with exhibition spaces. But as the inequalities that plague the culture industry are broadly exposed, I wrote for Biodesigned about how practitioners face a crisis of conscience. I was also delighted to serve as part of the jury process for the always-amazing Biodesign Challenge this year.…
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In spring 2020 I collaborated with friend and colleague Nikki Columbus, as colleagues at both CUNY’s James Gallery and the Vera List Center to create Art • Work • Place. Pre-pandemic, it was originally planned as a two-day summit on efforts to create a just and equitable workplace in the art world—union organizing at museums,…
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Points of Entry is a conversation with curators, artists, and other researchers from across the globe about who they are, what they do, and how we can collectively (re)imagine the roles of cultural organizations in a rapidly changing world. I spoke to POE host, Katie Kheriji-Watts, here.
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In April I spoke with the Brown University Arts Initiative, and my good friend and colleague curator Kate Kraczon, about how the pandemic had started to affect arts institutions. Watch the interview here.
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My favorite place to read or write: Vestoj. Read this longform article Amber and I co-wrote here.
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Coming Spring 2021…..
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In September 2019 we—my partner in crime Amber Winick (design historian) and the Maternity Care Coalition (a groundbreaking maternal health care provider)—were awarded a $250,000 Pew Grant. The project will examine how bodies influence design—from fashion fixations to pain relief—and how design influences bodies. The work will explore historical and contemporary conversations around reproduction, maternity,…
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We started a newsletter at Art + Museum Transparency. Find out more here, and sign up!
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The Walker Art Center asked Art + Museum Transparency to sum up 2019. Read it here.
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Installation view from Designs for Different Futures, October 17, 2019-March 8, 2020 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
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I spent a lot of 2018-19 working on this book which accompanied the exhibition of the same name, which I co-curated at the Philadelphia Museum of Art before it traveled to the Walker Art Center
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Today the Rainbow Flag is a familiar sight, at the Pride Parade and around the world. But it is not only a universal symbol; it is also a brilliant object of design that is part of the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, in New York.This story, based on true events, follows the birth…
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I was interviewed by a super smart early-career art historian, Rachel Kubrick, about internships in our field. Read it here.
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I have co-organized this exhibition (and accompanying book and public programs) with a really large team of wonderful people across every single department of the museum, opening Oct 22, 2019 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Designs for Different Futures October 22, 2019–March 8, 2020 Whether it’s apocalyptic, utopian, or still up for grabs, the…
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I spoke to the Design Museum in London about the Lia Pregnancy Kit, which I nominated in this year’s Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition. Read the interview here. Here’s one of the highlights:
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I participated in the discussion on AAM’s Museopunks podcast, Episode 37: Experience doesn’t pay the rent. From their show notes: “Unpaid internships are commonplace in the museum world, supported by a culture that suggests “experience” and the chance to get “a foot in the door” are worth the sacrifice of time and lost earnings. This…
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In May 2019, I co-founded the Art + Museum Transparency collective with a group of colleagues and we called for salary transparency and more equitable working conditions in our field. This is ongoing, live work. We released two crowdsourced docs for arts and museum workers: Salary Spreadsheet http://rebrand.ly/salaryspreadsheet and the Internship Spreadsheet http://rebrand.ly/internshipspreadsheet You can submit…
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My brilliant co-conspirator, Amber Winick, and I spoke about our project. “Designing Motherhood: A Century of Making (and Unmaking) Babies,” at Sotheby’s on Mother’s Day. One of our sheroes, Meg Crane, who designed the first at-home pregnancy test, came to the talk and made our day. Thanks to Charlotte Burns for having us.
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I wrote about parenting, labor, and the art world for Hyperallergic (article here). I don’t think anything I’ve ever written has prompted so many responses as this article, and I’m working with colleagues on ways to corral this shared energy into new mechanisms for change. Be in touch if you want to join.
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Sincere thanks to the brilliant Point Line Projects and Ilana Curtis for this thoughtful interview.
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I moderated a panel at the United Nations as part of Céline Semaan’s excellent and thoughtful summit on sustainability and the fashion industry (synopsis here).
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Right now, I’m super excited to be collaborating with brilliant design thinker Amber Winick on a book and exhibition, Designing Motherhood: A Century of Making (and Unmaking) Babies. Find it on Instagram at @designingmotherhood
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Recent piece for Hyperallergic, “African-American Designers Hidden in Plain Sight.” We see objects like the View-Master and New Breed dashiki, both by Black designers, often in our daily lives and yet find them almost nowhere in the places where we preserve and examine our culture. Read more here.
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I was on a panel at TEFAF Spring 2018 titled “RESTRAINING/ADVANCING WOMEN IN POSTWAR AMERICA – IN ART, FASHION, AND MEDIA, 1947-1970” / Restraining and advancing was the critical tension in the depictions of women in art, media, and fashion throughout the 20th century. Perhaps no other period saw such polarized representations as the post-World…
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In September 2018, I moderated a conference on Sustainable Fashion at the French Embassy in New York, featuring from left to right Anne Fontaine, Hervé Ferrage (Deputy Cultural Counselor), Dorothée Charles (Anne Fontaine Foundation) (and me), Marie-Laurence de Chaunac (President of IFM Alumni USA), Laurent Claquin (Head of Kering Americas), Nicole Rycroft (Founder of Canopy),…
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Peer reviewed article forthcoming fall 2018 in the academic Journal of Visual Culture. Guns are usually designed with great attention to their aesthetic, ergonomic, and functional component parts. Yet, their contemporary manifestations are considered so culturally and symbolically fraught—especially in the United States—that guns produced in the last century have rarely been presented as industrial objects…
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Join me at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on October 10 for Pay What You Wish Wednesday in conjunction with Design Philadelphia for a really special “In the Artist’s Voice: Contemporary Design Conversations” gallery talk session co-sponsored by Ladies, Wine & Design Philly. 6:00–6:30 p.m.: Explore experiments in counter-fashion with the cofounders of the Rational Dress…
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In early November I will give a paper on the work of product and industrial designer Charles Harrison and the fashion designer company New Breed as part of a symposium marking the opening of African American Designers in Chicago: Art, Commerce, and the Politics of Race. This symposium gathers scholars and design practitioners who address all aspects…
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On August 25, 2018, my wonderful co-curator and author on I Will What I Want: Women, Design, and Empowerment, Jimena Acosta and I launched our book. Look out for the sister event in Philly in the fall at the brilliant Ulises art space in Fishtown.
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I’ll be speaking at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Museum as part of the annual Design History Studies conference in early September on the kilt and its many manifestations and cultural (dis)locations. “As a textile design and a fashion item, the kilt now stands as a cipher for romanticized Scottish nationalism and rugged masculinity. However, the…
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I wrote this article for Hyperallergic in July 2018 outlining a topic that has been percolating in my mind for some years, namely thoughts on why curatorial effort isn’t always acknowledged by museums and the press.
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I was interviewed (here) by my former colleague, Ariele Dionne-Krosnick, for Crea-co about what it means to be a curator today, the challenges of highlighting diverse work in a field notorious for its lack of diversity, the mentors who have inspired me, and some of the unique design stories I have uncovered along the way.
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I took part in the innovative and wide ranging arts festival held in Inverness, Scotland, each summer, XpoNorth, taking about how museums can fulfill their missions to connect to broad, diverse, and expanding audiences.
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I was really proud to invite the Philadelphia Voices of Pride, members of the Gilbert Baker Foundation, Cake Life bake shop, and Amber Hikes of the Mayor’s Office for LGBTQ+ Affairs to the PMA to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Rainbow Flag, in collaboration with colleagues across the museum who all came together to…
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Speaking on maternity fashion over the last 100 years as part of the free online Coursera course on fashion and design that I co-realized and co-taught.
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