Michelle Millar Fisher

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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.

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).

  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…

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),…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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.

I will be delivering a masterclass at the Royal College of Art in London at a one-week summer school that provides an immersive introduction to curatorial and critical perspectives that intersect with a wide range of art and design practice.