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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I wrote a review of By the People: Designing a Better America for the Journal of Design History, Volume 31, Issue 2, 25 May 2018, Pages 213–216 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epy019
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I wrote a review of the seminal digital art history resource, SmartHistory, for caa.reviews.
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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.
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In conjunction with Items: Is Fashion Modern? and the related free online course Fashion as Design, for which I was an instructor (mo.ma/fashionasdesign) I spoke with designer Howard Davis about the New Breed, the Afrocentric boutique he cofounded that operated in the 1960s.
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I was part of a visual commission instigated by Creative New York and shot by legendary photographer Brigitte Lacombe showcasing the face of MoMA’s future: young curators and fellows representing each of the Museum’s curatorial departments and MoMA PS1, pictured alongside some of the most exciting New York–based artists.
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From humble origins as an undergarment, to mass-produced fast-fashion staple, to highly collectible (and highly priced) commodity, the white T-shirt is a quintessential product of twentieth-century modernity and the ultimate sartorial and psychological blank canvas. Read my essay for Google Arts and Culture.
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I wrote an essay on authenticity and fashion for the journal Vestoj.
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Items made the NYT end of year best book list for its catalogue and for the exhibition itself!
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The catalogue to accompany the exhibition I co-organized with Jimena Acosta, I Will What I Want: Women, Design, and Empowerment, released May 2018.
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The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is currently collaborating with MoMA on an exhibition of the latter’s most beloved collection items; I contributed a few short essays to the catalogue–on the Rainbow Flag, the Self-Aligning Ball Bearing, and the Google Maps Pin.
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I have a peer-reviewed chapter on Bauhaus toy design in Megan Brandow-Faller’s edited volume on the material culture of childhood from Bloomsbury Academic Press, released May 2018.
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MoMA/Thames & Hudson. Peer-reviewed. Edited by Paola Antonelli and Michelle Millar Fisher. Texts by Paola Antonelli, Michelle Millar Fisher, and Stephanie Kramer with Luke Baker, Anna Burckhardt, Mei Mei Rado, Jennifer Tobias.
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“Profuse” is a useful word with which to approach this ambitious, high-concept effort. Organized by Paola Antonelli, senior curator of the Modern’s architecture and design department, and Michelle Millar Fisher, a curatorial assistant, it has involved years of research and travel and is as anthropological as it is aesthetic. Full NYT review here.
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I spoke to RTE Irish Radio about my love for the Aran Jumper in conjunction with our exhibition at MoMA, Items: Is Fashion Modern?
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Courtauld Books Online. Peer-reviewed. Edited by Meredith A. Brown and Michelle Millar Fisher, with contributions by Claire Bishop, Andrianna Campbell, David Kennedy Cutler, Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Liz Magic Laser, Richard Meyer, Alexander Nemerov, Ileana L. Selejan, and others. Collaboration has been a component of art making for centuries—from ancient Greek potters and painters to nineteenth-century photographers Hill and Adamson to the contemporary Raqs…
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I was part of the broadcast as Gilbert Baker was remembered for his powerful design of the Rainbow Flag
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I Will What I Want: Women, Design, and Empowerment April 8-23, 2017 at The Sheila Johnson Design Galleries at Parsons The New School for Design, and January 19-May 22, 2018, at muca-Roma, Mexico City as part of the city’s Year of Design // Co-organized with Jimena Acosta I Will What I Want: Women, Design, and Empowerment explores…
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March 2017, Brooklyn Rail: “Fashion is absolutely embedded in this conversation, and in multiple ways—as a marker of time and memory, a maker of status, or vehicle for fantastical escapism, certainly, it helps us mediate, describe, and explain modern life. We think of the decrepit clothes of the stonebreakers painted by Gustave Courbet that—ripped, patched,…
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Our discussion ranged from the historical (we’d never heard of early-20th-century “stoutwear” before Lauren schooled us) to the political (what does it mean to call out a certain fashion conversation as “plus size” in a country where the majority of women’s bodies might be described in this way?). We also learned that the concept of plus…
Read MoreP.E.O. Scholar for 2017-18. I am very honored to be a P.E.O. Scholar for the 2017-18 academic year, supported by an amazing chapter and sisterhood of women helping other women with education. During the award period I will complete my doctoral dissertation. The P.E.O. Scholar Awards (PSA) were established in 1991 to provide substantial merit-based…
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I recently spent four intense days in Lagos, Nigeria, researching for MoMA’s upcoming exhibition Items: Is Fashion Modern? and I’m certain that this dynamic city is one of fashion’s most exciting crucibles. And, through individuals and collectives focused on design, it may also be at the forefront of a self-organized revolt against and reorganization of…
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Peer-reviewed. We launched an entirely new e-journal, the first of its kind, covering the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Art History Pedagogy. The first journal issue of Art History Pedagogy and Practice launched in December 2017, with over 1,000+ article downloads in the first week. A huge accomplishment for the entire ArtHistoryTeachingResources.org team.
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Items: Is Fashion Modern? Sept 26, 2017–Feb 5, 2018 // Co-organized with Paola Antonelli. As part of the MoMA exhibition Items: Is Fashion Modern? we kept a research-in-progress platform here on our exhibition blog. On May 15 and 16 we held a BONANZA research kickoff at MoMA. Check it out here.
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I have been very lucky to work with Paola and in collaboration with the Hyundai Card Design Library on a series of exhibitions that have opened in Seoul over the past three years. This final one, “”This Is for Everyone,” explores symbols and icons in graphic design, and opened in Seoul on August 2, 2016.
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I moderated two panels on virtual reality with three really wonderful practitioners and convened by a great colleague, Veena Vijayakumar. More details here.
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An interview for Harvard GSD on the Design and Violence project at MoMA.
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I collaborated as a co-curator on Marc Fischer’s awesome Hardcore Architecture project, and made an interview publication with designer Justin Blinder, bringing the project to ABC No Rio in May 2016. I also moderated a short discussion between Marc and Justin.
Read MoreFashion + Design + MoMA
Excited to be working on this show at MoMA!
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My colleague Luke Baker and I made it into the WSJ as part of a story on the new 4th floor collection rehang at MoMA which we–and many other curators at the museum, led by Ann Temkin and Martino Stierli–helped co-organize: 1960-1969: From the Collection.
Read MoreRecent post on the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Art History Pedagogy and Practice (AHPP), a new online, open-access, and peer-reviewed journal developed in response to two key issues: first, the recognition that art historians need opportunities to share rigorous pedagogical research produced in the field; and second, the reality that teaching in the discipline has historically been undervalued in both economic and scholarly…
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PROJECTED HOMES: AN ARCHAEOLOGY IN EIGHT PARTS. March 2016. Undertaken while a Writer-in-Residence at Recess in NYC, in parallel with Total Effekt: Living Magasine. I. Prison House Architecture, whether domestic or institutional, public or private, has always been in dialogue with the barely articulable recesses of the imagination. We may think of the prison today as a…
Read MoreHear ye, hear ye…..if you do digital humanities work then CAA and SAH wrote guidelines so that P&T boards (and diss advisors) know how to evaluate them and give credit where credit is due. Spread the word! Here’s an introduction to them that I wrote for CAA News after working on the taskforce for the…
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I participated in the HarvardxDesign 2016 conference, moderating a panel on design for health and talking about one of my design heroes–Nye Bevan, architect of Britains National Health Service (NHS) in the 1940s.
Read MoreWhat does it mean to collect and display video games?
My mentor and boss at MoMA, Paola Antonelli, has pioneered the video game collection at the Museum and I’ve been learning about this field of design in her wake. Here’s a recent interview I participated in reflecting on this collecting legacy. Part one here and part two here
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Jan 7, 2016 // Gilbert Baker and I talked about the acquisition of his Rainbow Flag at MoMA!
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Exhibitions Advisory Committee, Leeds College of Art
Very happy to be part of the team advising on the great exhibitions program at Leeds College of Art.
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AHTR presentation at SECAC 2015
Summary [download the full white paper here] While art historians in higher education devote extensive amounts of time, effort, and energy to the job of teaching, the attitude persists that this role is separate, or even a distraction, from the primary responsibility to contribute as scholars in the field. Maintaining the duality of teaching and…
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I co-organized this event, “Is This For Everyone? Design and the Common Good,” with Laura Kurgan, Marta Gutman, and Raphael Sperry in conjunction with the MoMA exhibition, “This is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good.” .
Read MoreFall 2015 // Teaching @ Parsons The New School
Sept 2015 // Being interviewed by YouKu China in the MoMA galleries, talking about the awesome Kinematics Dress 💥
