The American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) announced today that Dr. Caroline Culp has been appointed the Warren Family Assistant Curator. For a two-year period beginning in September 2024, Culp will contribute to research about the Museum’s collection and share scholarship with the public through exhibition interpretation, publications, tours, programs, and lectures.
Culp is a scholar of American art with specialties in colonial and early national painting and material culture, women artists, and the history of portraiture. She has developed a curatorial practice centering community collaborations and DEAI initiatives through positions held at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center of Vassar College, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
As a curator, her exhibitions have included This Drop of Earth: American Landscape Miniatures, 1840-1890 (2024), Between the Lines: Innovation and Expression in Women’s Sewing Samplers (2023), and Fertile Ground: The Hudson Valley Animal Paintings of Caroline Clowes (2022), for which she served as co-author for the accompanying catalog.
“I am thrilled to join the team at AFAM and work with the Museum’s distinguished colleagues on projects that are moving the study of American art forward in urgent and important ways,” said Culp. “As the Warren Family Assistant Curator, I am excited to draw from my decade of experience engaging diverse audiences in the history of American art to spotlight the work of neglected historical women and artists of color in AFAM’s future exhibitions.”
Throughout the two-year period of her fellowship, Culp, who received her BA in Art History and History (with Honors) from Wake Forest University and her MA and PhD in Art History from Stanford University, will work with Emelie Gevalt, Curatorial Chair for Collections and Curator of Folk Art.
“We are delighted to welcome Caroline,” said Gevalt. “Her innovative and insightful scholarship and wide range of expertise in early American art and material culture will make her a dynamic and thoughtful contributor to the Museum’s exhibitions and research initiatives.”
About the Warren Family Curatorial Fellowship
With generous funding from Irwin Warren and AFAM President Elizabeth V. Warren, this fellowship launched in 2021 to foster the advancement of an individual who works with Museum staff on exhibitions and exhibition plans, collection development, and scholarly publications. Sadé Ayorinde was the inaugural Warren Family Assistant Curator from 2021 to 2023 before stepping down to become the Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
About the American Folk Art Museum
The American Folk Art Museum engages people of all backgrounds through its collections, exhibitions, publications, and programs as the leading forum shaping the understanding and appreciation of folk and self-taught art across time and place.