EDUCATION

BARD GRADUATE CENTER New York, NY, PhD, Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture.

Dissertation: “Patchwork Politics: Crafting Indigeneity and Settler Colonialism in South Florida, 1880-1980s.”

BARD GRADUATE CENTER, New York, NY, M.A. Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture.

Qualifying paper: “‘Mrs. Colcleugh is not an average woman’: The Domestic and the Native in US Women’s Travel Journalism, ca. 1880-1910.”

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, TEACHER’S COLLEGE, New York, NY, M.A. Arts Administration.

Thesis: “New Facilities/New Brands: Institutional Support for Craft and Folk Art in New York City.”

POMONA COLLEGE, Claremont, CA, B.A. Women’s Studies and Art History.

Thesis: “From Beauty to the Beast: On the Feminist Critical Receptions of Cindy Sherman and Hannah Wilke.”

MUSEUM EXPERIENCE

2019-present    TOMAQUAG MUSEUM, Board of Directors, Chair, Collections Committee, Exeter RI.

2016-8  NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Collection Manager (formerly Project Manager for Collections), New York, NY.

2010-4  MUSEUM FOR AFRICAN ART, Director of Exhibition and Collection Management (formerly Chief Registrar and Exhibition Manager, and Registrar), New York NY.

2006-10 THE JEWISH MUSEUM, Assistant Registrar for Exhibitions, New York NY.

2005-6 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, Administrative Assistant, Registrars Office, New York NY.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN, Lecturer, Department of Theory + History of Art + Design, 2025-present.

Course taught: “Critical Introduction to the History of Architecture and Design”

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY, Lecturer, School of Art + Design, Fall 2024

Course taught: “Seminar in Visual Intelligence”

BARD GRADUATE CENTER, Doctoral Teaching Fellow, Spring 2024.

Course taught: “Crafting Intersectionality”

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY/AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY MA PROGRAM, Instructor and Project Editor, Spring 2022.

Course taught: “Exhibition Practice in Global Context”

BARD GRADUATE CENTER, Instructor, Lab for Teen Thinkers, 2019 & 2020. Mentored local high school students in material culture research.

PUBLICATIONS

(under contract) “CONTESTING SETTLER COLONIALISM IN THE FLORIDA SEMINOLE HOME, 1920S-1960S” in Material Histories of Home Economics, Sarah Anne Carter and Marina Moskowitz, editors, University of Delaware Press.

(in press) “ENTWINED: FREEDOM, SOVEREIGNTY, AND THE SEA” exhibit review, Museum Worlds.

2024      “PLAYING SEMINOLE INDIAN: THE CULTURAL APPROPRIATION OF SEMINOLE MEN’S FASHION,” in Fashion in American Life: Agency, Identity and the Everyday, Hazel Clark and Lauren Downing Peters, editors, Bloomsbury: 2024.

2022      “FABRIC OF A NATION” exhibit review, Journal of Modern Craft 15, no. 2 (2022).  

2022      “‘AS WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE’: DECOLONIZING THE TOMAQUAG MUSEUM’S COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT POLICY” With Lorén Spears, Collections 18, no. 1 (March 2022): 31–41.

2020      “A SUSTAINING CHEROKEE BASKET: COLONIAL INSCRIPTION AND INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE,” Sequitur, Fall 2020.

2019      Object and subject essays for “THE STORY BOX: FRANZ BOAS, GEORGE HUNT AND THE MAKING OF ANTHROPOLOGY” exhibition website, Bard Graduate Center, 2019.

SELECT PRESENTATIONS

2025      COMMUNITY CULTURAL TALK, MICCOSUKEE TRIBE OF INDIANS RESERVATION “Miccosukee and Seminole Fashion and the Sewing Machine, 1880-1930s.”

2024      FASHION IN AMERICAN LIFE BOOK LAUNCH, Parsons New School.  “Playing Seminole Indian: The Cultural Appropriation of Seminole Men’s Fashion,”

2024      MAKING – MEANING -MEMORY: A SEWN IN AMERICA SYMPOSIUM, Daughters of the American Revolution Museum. “Indigenizing Technology: The Sewing Machine and Florida Native Seminole Dress, 1880-1930”

2024      UNRAVELING FASHION NARRATIVES Symposium, Fashion Studies Network, Parsons New School. “Indigenizing Technology: Seminole Fashion and the Sewing Machine, 1880-1930”

2023      GLOBAL LEGACIES OF ARTS AND CRAFTS Symposium, Invited Speaker. “’It is better to help them help themselves’: Craft Development Projects with the Florida Seminole, 1930s-1960s”

2022      CRAFT HISTORY WORKSHOP: LABOR AND LANDSCAPE IN THE UNITED STATES, Invited Speaker. “Embodying Land and Labor: The Production and Consumption of Florida Native Seminole Palmetto Dolls in a Settler Colonial Context, 1920s-1950s.”

2022      SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM Annual Fellows Lecture. “Seminole and Miccosukee Palmetto Dolls and Women’s Negotiation of Settler Colonialism in South Florida, c. 1930s-1950s”

2021      THE [AFTER]LIVES OF OBJECTS: TRANSPOSITION IN THE MATERIAL WORLD graduate student symposium, University of Virginian Department of Art. “Playing Seminole Indian: Florida Native Seminole Garments in Settler Performance, 1930s-1960s”

2020      TEXTILE SOCIETY OF AMERICA symposium. “Altering Clothing: Appropriation, Assimilation, and Native Resilience in Florida Seminole and White Settler Relations, 1940s-1950s”

2019      NATIVE AMERICAN ART STUDIES ASSOCIATION Symposium, October 2019. “Cooperativos and Indigenous Feminisms: Craft and Social Activism in Chiapas, Mexico, ca. 1976-1996” on panel “Native Art, North American Governments, and the Politics of Control.”

2018      SHARED GROUND Symposium, co-organized by Bard Graduate Center, The Center for Craft, and Museum of Arts and Design, September 2018. “Women, Craft, and Indigenous Resistance in the Zapatista Movement of Chiapas, Mexico.”

SELECT GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

2023      CENTER FOR CRAFT Craft Research Fund Project Grant

2022      THE DECORATIVE ARTS TRUST Research Grant

2021-2 SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow

2021      HAGLEY MUSEUM AND LIBRARY H. B. Du Pont Dissertation Fellow in Business, Technology, and Society, 2021.

2020-1  AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY Phillips Fund for Native American Research Grant Recipient.

2015–6 BARD GRADUATE CENTER Fellowship in Museum Education and Public Programming.