Writing and Publications

As a scholar and curator, I have written on a variety of art historical subjects. My writing has been published in peer-reviewed journals, catalogues, and online periodicals. I have included links to open-access materials or downloadable PDFs on this page whenever possible.

If you are seeking a contributor to a catalogue, guidebook, digital platform, or another writing project, please contact me.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Laboring for Art Access

“Laboring for Art Access: The Outreach Exhibition Initiatives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Federal Community Art Center Project,” Space Between Journal, vol. 18, expected fall 2023

This forthcoming article considers the institutional and community relationships underpinning art outreach exhibitions by examining two interwar initiatives: the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Neighborhood Circulating Exhibitions and the Federal Community Art Center Project (CACP). Both initiatives sought to demonstrate institutional relevance by broadening access to original works of art, but the curatorial staff in each organization did not work alone. Interactions between non-museum staff and volunteers as well as museum personnel shaped their appearance and content, from the selection of appropriate sites to the maintenance of objects.

The Artist as Soldier

This article considers a group of self-portraits created by New Mexico artist Howard Cook (1901-1981) while on assignment as a war art correspondent in the South Pacific in 1943. Through an expressionistic use of ink and paint and a compositional emphasis on his passivity, Cook offers a personalized interpretation of combat conditions that underscores his sense of exposure. More broadly, Cook’s oeuvre highlights the significance of the War Art Unit and the potential for more scholarship on this initiative.

Image: Howard Cook, Self-Portrait in a Foxhole, 1943, mixed media on paper. Permanent Collection of the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico.

Book Chapters

Exhibition Work: Exploring Labour in the Federal Community Art Center Project

“Exhibition Work: Exploring Labour in the Federal Community Art Center Project,” in Histories of Exhibition Design in the Museum: Makers, Process, and Practice, edited by Kate Guy, Hajra Williams, and Claire Wintle, 21-32. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2024.

This chapter examines the labor underpinning the Federal Community Art Center Project, beginning with a consideration of how it potentially influenced the content and appearance of traveling exhibitions. It then explores the daily operations of community art centers through a case study of the Roswell Museum in New Mexico, focusing on the experiences of women and Hispano staff members. This chapter developed out of a paper I gave at the 2020 conference “Museum Exhibition Design: Histories and Futures,” organized by Claire Wintle, Hajra Williams, and Kate Guy.

At Home in the Digital Humanities?

“At Home in the Digital Humanities?” co-authored with Elizabeth Losh and Laura Beltrán-Rubio. In Digital Humanities and Laboratories, edited by Urszula Pawlicka-Deger and Christopher Thomson, 225-238. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, Routledge.

This chapter discusses how the Equality Lab’s virtual conference practice contributes to a theorization of the digital humanities and humanities-based labs by examining the significance of hospitality and display to lab practices. Using two of the Equality Lab’s virtual conferences as case studies, this essay first explores how these two events underscored structural and conceptual intersections between homes, museums, and labs.  It then examines how labs can use virtual conferences and related service-oriented activities to contribute to theorizations of the digital humanities by centering the performative aspects of virtual discussion while providing digital humanities services to students.

Exhibition Catalogues and Essays

‘This Ambition Which Haunts Me Every Moment’

“ ‘This Ambition Which Haunts Me Every Moment’: The Multifaceted Career of Peter Hurd.” In Magical and Real: Henriette Wyeth and Peter Hurd, A Retrospective, Vol. 2, Peter Hurd. Edited by Kirsten M. Jensen, 1-21. Doylestown: James A. Michener Art Museum, 2018.

This biographical essay discusses the life and career of New Mexico artist Peter Hurd (1904-1984). It explores how Hurd established a distinct artistic voice by applying the illustration training of his mentor, N.C. Wyeth, to the people and places of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas, producing landscapes and portraits that set him apart from both the Wyeths and his contemporaries in northern New Mexico.

Image: Peter Hurd, The Dry River, 1938, egg tempera on panel. Permanent Collection of the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico.

Dorothy Peterson

Dorothy Peterson: Painting New Mexico. Exhibition Brochure, Roswell Museum, 2017

This essay discusses the career of prominent Roswell watercolorist and educator Dorothy Peterson. As a teacher, she has dedicated herself to the creative enrichment of Roswell and its surrounding communities for over thirty years. In her painting, she explores New Mexico’s distinctive sense of place. Her gestural watercolor and acrylic compositions celebrate the joy of creative expression while taking inspiration from history, archaeology and personal experience. 

Brochure designed by the City of Roswell; photography provided by Dorothy Peterson.

David Emitt Adams

Power: New Works by David Emitt Adams. Exhibition brochure, Roswell Museum, 2017.

This essay considers a new collection of wet collodion prints by photographer David Emitt Adams. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, Adams explores the intersections between landscape and culture through the use of historical photographic processes. In his new portfolio, Power, Adams meditates on the petroleum industry by printing images of oil refineries on discarded drum lids. 

Brochure designed by Kathy Avery; photography by David Emitt Adams

The Art of the Book

The Art of the Book. Exhibition brochure, Roswell Museum, 2016.

This essay offers an overview of the book as a contemporary art form through a survey of ten book artists working around New Mexico. From hand-sewn clothing to collage videos, each artist challenges viewers to reconsider books beyond the conventional text-printed codex while simultaneously embracing the book as a means of communication for creative ends.

Brochure designed by Kathy Avery; photography provided by the artists.

Looking Between the Lines

Roderick Mead: Looking Between the Lines. Exhibition brochure, Roswell Museum, 2016.

Originally from New Jersey, Roderick Mead (1900-1971) became involved with the experimental printmaking collective Atelier 17 while living in Paris, developing a Surrealist-infused aesthetic. After returning to the United States during World War II, Mead interpreted the landscapes of southeast New Mexico through a Surrealist lens, producing a distinctly modern interpretation of the Southwest.

Brochure designed by Kathy Avery; photography provided by Roswell Museum and Art Center.

Roger Sweet

Guitars from Club Muse: Roger Sweet, Roswell Museum, 2016.

Based in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, Roger Sweet has created a unique oeuvre of sculptures from deconstructed guitars, using paint, found objects, and other materials to transform these musical instruments into dancing figures, furniture, and more. Created over a thirty-year span, these pieces address art history, Cold War anxieties, and other topics. Uniting these seemingly disparate works is an overarching passion for the guitar as an expressive form.

Brochure designed by Kathy Avery; photography by Theodore Greer.

Signe Stuart: Fifteen

Signe Stuart: Fifteen. Exhibition catalogue, Roswell Museum, 2015.

This catalogue examines the career of Santa Fe artist Signe Stuart. A multimedia artist working with painting, works on paper, mixed-media constructions, and installation, Stuart explores the dynamism of the natural world through her use of positive and negative space, light and shadow, and a focus on underpinning structures through sewing, assemblage, and other forms of construction.

Catalogue designed by Kathy Avery; photography provided by Signe Stuart.

The Wiggins-Howe Legacy

The Wiggins-Howe Legacy. Exhibition catalogue, Roswell Museum, 2014.

For over a century, the Wiggins and Howes have been leaving an indelible creative mark on the city of Roswell and the surrounding region. This essay traces the history of this influential artistic family by discussing the work of ten different family members over five generations. Whether working with fireworks, ceramics, or film, the Wiggins and Howes have long enriched Roswell’s artistic presence with their boundless creativity and passionate community engagement.

Brochure designed by Kathy Avery; photography by Jose Rivera.

Essays

Reflections on John Abbot’s Summer Red Bird

When imagining the varied collections at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, John Abbot’s late eighteenth-century watercolor Summer Red Bird is not necessarily the first piece to come to mind. Yet Summer Red Bird encapsulates the collection’s multifaceted histories and geographies. As a scientific illustration, it is both decidedly Southern and international in its geography, its red bird in dialogue with both the eighteenth century and the present regarding migrations, climate change, and fluctuating ecologies.

Image: John Abbot, Summer Red Bird (no title), ca. 1790, watercolor on paper. Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, Museum Purchase, 1981–38.

Giving a Good Impression

This essay contemplates the intimacy of artistic gift changes through three personalized etchings presented by B. J. O. Nordfeldt (1878–1955) to fellow etcher Bertha E. Jaques (1863–1941), now part of the permanent collection of the Roswell Museum and Art Center in New Mexico, form an intriguing example. Embellished with notes and informal drawings, these impressions recall aesthetic trends associated with the Etching Revival while underscoring the often private nature of print consumption.

Image: B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Barge in the North Branch, Chicago, 1912, etching with hand-written inscriptions on paper. Permanent Collection of the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico.

Eclectic Collecting

This essay meditates on Roswell, New Mexico, and more broadly the Southwest, as a contemporary pilgrimage site for audiences of varying interests. In addition to discussing key objects from the Roswell Museum collection and their status as contemporary relics, the essay explores Roswell’s significance to Ufology and ongoing interest in extraterrestrials. It also considers southeastern New Mexico’s importance as an artistic pilgrimage site through the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, which enables artists from around the world to live and work there.

Image: Peter Hurd, Summer in the Mountains (detail), n.d., egg tempera on panel, Roswell Museum.

Whimsy

“Whimsy: The Spirit of Play at Shelburne.” Antiques, July/August 2013, 132-134.

This essay explores the concept of whimsy as a key facet to the collecting practice of American folk art proponent and Shelburne Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb. This essay appeared in Antiques magazine as part of a four-part essay series on Color, Pattern, Whimsy, Scale: The Best of Shelburne Museum, the inaugural exhibition for the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education.

Image: Unidentified maker, Tin Whimsy Bowl of Flowers, 19th century
Tin, iron, and solder, Shelburne Museum.

College of Animals and Composition 7-Snow

Cornelius Saftleven: College of Animals,” and “Raymond Jonson: Composition 7-Snow.” In Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection. Edited by Bonnie Pitman, 155, 253. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

These two brief essays appear in the 2012 guidebook on the Dallas Museum of Art collection, intended for visitors or readers wanting an overview of the museum’s holdings. The first entry discusses the iconography of Cornelius Saftleven’s 1655 allegorical painting College of Animals in relation to 17th-century Dutch culture and politics. The second essay explores Raymond Jonson’s burgeoning interests in abstraction and nonobjectivity as expressed in his 1928 painting Composition 7-Snow.

Image: Raymond Jonson, “Composition 7—Snow,” 1928, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Duncan E. Boeckman, 1984.12.FA

Monthly Columns and Blogs

“From the Vault,” Vision Magazine, 2014-2018

Vision is a cultural magazine highlighting activities and events around southeastern New Mexico. During my tenure as Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Roswell Museum and Art Center, I contributed a monthly column featuring objects from the permanent collection, special exhibitions, or classes.

The Fanciful Lobster (2012-2018)

This was my personal blog prior to creating my current website. I discussed a variety of topics pertaining to my professional activities and personal interests, including exhibition work, art-making, the history of printmaking, and travel. Although I no longer post on this blog it remains online as a resource.

Shelburne Museum Blog (2012-2013)

As a curatorial fellow at Shelburne Museum, I periodically contributed posts discussing exhibitions I was working on and related projects.

Dallas Museum of Art Uncrated (2011)

I co-wrote this post with fellow McDermott Intern Karen A. Colbert about my first exhibition, Cross-Cultural Dialogues in European and American Landscapes.