As a Bowdoin alumna and former Curatorial and Education Assistant at the Museum, I am excited to return to the Museum as the Curatorial Assistant and Manager of Student Programs. The Museum and its staff had a formative impact on my time as a student, and I am eager to facilitate student engagement on behalf of the Museum.

I arrived at the beginning of July and have spent the past few weeks revisiting the collection, getting to know the summer cohort of student interns, and arranging group tours for the public. I am encouraged by how the collection has grown and deepened in the last several years, something best captured by the Museum’s current exhibition, Art Purposes: Object Lessons for the Liberal Arts.

As the Curatorial Assistant and Manager of Student Programs, I look forward to sustaining current connections and developing new avenues for student engagement with the Museum through programming, special events, and supporting object-specific research projects. As an emerging scholar devoted to the humanities, I also hope to demonstrate the varied ways to enter the arts and cultural heritage fields.

My own research centers around art, material and visual culture, and design history in North America, particularly focused on non-Euro American cultures. I received my M.A. from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware in 2019. My master’s thesis entitled, Moorish in the Midwest, considered the Alhambra’s influence on nineteenth-century American architecture using the Midwest as a case study. I am excited to rediscover and share diverse and layered narratives through curatorial projects at the Museum and look forward to working with students and student organizations.

Elizabeth Humphrey

Curatorial Assistant and Manager of Student Programs