Kendall DeBoer — CV
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EDUCATION
Ph.D., University of Rochester, Visual and Cultural Studies, Department of Art and Art History, Rochester, NY
Dr. Rachel Haidu, Advisor
B.A., The University of Texas, Austin, TX, May 2016, summa cum laude
Majors: Art History, English, and French
Dr. Ann Reynolds, Advisor
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EXPERIENCE
Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME, 2023 — present
Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2021 — 2023
John Wilmerding Intern in American Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2020 — 2021
CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice, New York, NY, 2019
Windgate Fellow in Contemporary Craft, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, 2018
Project Assistant, William Blake Archive, Rochester, NY, 2018 — 2022
Teen Programs, The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX, 2017
Exhibitions Intern, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX, 2015 — 2016
Curatorial Intern in Latin American Art, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, 2014 — 2015
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EXHIBITIONS
By Design: The Worlds of Betsy James Wyeth (Curator), Colby College Museum of Art, June 12−November 2, 2026
Everyday Devotions: Gifts from the Alex Katz Foundation and Beyond (Co-curator with Kiko Aebi), Colby College Museum of Art, February 12−May 31, 2026
Mαwte: Bound Together | Contemporary Wabanaki Art (Co-curator with Sarah Sockbeson), Colby College Museum of Art, November 19, 2025−April 13, 2025
Alive & Kicking: Fantastic Installations by Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Catalina Schliebener Muñoz, and Gladys Nilsson (Curator), Colby College Museum of Art, June 26, 2024−November 11, 2024
Garden Magic (Co-curator with Maya Rubio), OVERLAP Newport, November 16−December 22, 2024
Digital Iridescence: Jell-O in New Media (Curator), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 28, 2023-March 24, 2024
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction (Graduate Fellow), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 17, 2023−January 21, 2024; National Gallery of Art, March 17−July 28, 2024; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, November 8, 2024−March 2, 2025; The Museum of Modern Art, April 20, 2025−September 13, 2025
The Banner Project: Sheida Soleimani (Curator), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, August 20, 2023−June 23, 2024
Tender Loving Care: Contemporary Art from the Collection (Co-curator with Michelle Millar Fischer), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, July 22, 2023−January 12, 2025
Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence (Co-curator with Sarah Thompson), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 26−July 16, 2023; Seattle Art Museum, October 19, 2023−January 21, 2024; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, September 21, 2025−January 5,2025
SMFA at Tufts: Archive and Autobiography (Curator), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, November 19, 2022−April 16, 2023
Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock (Graduate Fellow), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, July 25−September 19, 2021; Cranbrook Art Museum, October 30, 2021−March 27, 2022
Mending: Craft and Community—Selections from the Museum’s Collection (Co-curator with Anna Walker), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, December 8, 2018−October 20, 2019
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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
“Dance, You Fools, Dance: Gladys Nilsson’s Temporary Monuments,” Gleefully Askew: A Gladys Nilsson Retrospective. Edited by Francesca Wilmott. Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2026.
“Desire Paths: Artists on Allen and Benner Island,” By Design: The Worlds of Betsy James Wyeth. New York: Rizzoli, 2026.
“Joan Snyder by Kendall DeBoer,” BOMB Magazine, January 13, 2025.
“Superbloom: The Making of ‘Garden Magic,” Mister Magazine 3, 2025.
“Queered Botany, Quilted Archives: In Conversation with Aaron McIntosh,” Boston Art Review, November 28, 2023.
“Wedding Cake Toppers: Miniatures, Excess, and Fantasy,” Dilettante Army, Spring 2023.
“Jewel-Encrusted Rats in Ecclesiastical Garb: Art and Treasures for You, Honey,” Decorating Dissidence 17, 2023.
“Review: Ceramics in the Expanded Field,” Journal of Modern Craft, Vol. 16, Issue 1, 2023.
“Textile Politics: Newport Art Museum’s ‘Social Fabric’ Remixes the Subversive Stitch,’ Boston Art Review, April 27, 2023.
“Kathy Butterly Interviewed,” BOMB Magazine, February 27, 2023.
“Florine and the Three Worlds,” Dilettante Army, Fall 2020.
“Judith Schaechter at Memorial Art Gallery,” Cornelia Magazine, Spring 2020.
“Blake’s Afterlife: Howard Finster, the Backwoods Blake,” Hell’s Printing Press, November 11, 2019.
“‘Stay the Course’: An Interview with Artist Joyce J. Scott,” Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, January 16, 2019.
“Curatorial Fabulations: Difference, Subversion, and Exhibition-as-Form in ‘Outliers and American Vanguard Art,” InVisible Culture, August, 21, 2018.
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SELECTED SYMPOSIA, LECTURES, AND PANELS
Keynote panelist, “Transforming Museums Across the Dawnland,” Association for Historians of American Art Symposium, Fall 2026.
Panelist, “Maine Contemporary Art,” New England American Studies Association, 2025.
Convener, “Contemporary Wabanaki Art,” Lunder Institute of American Art, 2024.
Panelist, “‘Strange Girls’: Gender, Hybridity, and Adornment in Surrealist Costumes,” Surrealisms 2023: Houston, International Society for the Study of Surrealism, 2023.
Panelist, “Jewel-Encrusted Rats in Ecclesiastical Garb: Art and Treasures for You, Honey,” Prophetic Imagination in Contemporary Art, 111th College Art Association Annual Conference, 2023.
“Contemporary Makers and the Feed Sack Revival,” Thrift Style, Central Library of Rochester & Monroe County, Rochester, NY, June 2021.
“Translucent Insect, Glistening Webs: Florine Stettheimer’s Canopies, Veils, and Cocoons,” The Frick Collection Symposium on the History of Art, New York, NY, April 2021.
Panelist, “Digital Iridescence: The Radiant Sparkle of Tender, Shimmering Jell-O, Remixed,” 109th CAA Annual Conference, February 2021.
“two million stitches i simply couldn’t leave off: abstraction, accretion, and affect in madge gill’s textiles,” Close at Hand: Touch and Tactility in Art, Saint Louis, MO, February 2020.
Panelist, “‘Botticellophane’: High Artifice and the Sanctity of Surface in Four Saints in Three Acts,” 108th CAA Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, February 2020.
Panelist, “Alchemy, Metamorphosis, and Sign Transformation: Iconoclash in Leonora Carrington’s Works on Wood, Wool, Silk, and Vellum,” SURREALISMS: Inaugural Conference of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism, Lewisburg, PA, November 2018.
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TEACHING
University of Rochester, 2017 — 2020
Art History Instructor, Fringes: Surrealists, Outsiders, and Craft in 20th Century Art
Teaching Assistant, Writing on Art (Dr. Janet Berlo), American Experiments: Film and Art of the 1930s (Dr. James Rosenow), The Black Body (Dr. Kate Mariner), Intro to Media Studies (Dr. Rachel Haidu), Intro to Art and Visual Culture (Dr. Paul Duro)
University of Texas at Austin, 2013 — 2016
Writing Tutor, Undergraduate Writing Center
Writing Fellow, Intro to Liberal Arts Honors
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RECENT GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND AWARDS
Dissertation Fellowship, Winterthur Museum / Ephemera Society of America, 2025
Project Grant, Wyeth Foundation for American Art, 2025
Winner, Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student, University of Rochester, 2021
Dissertation Fellowship, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of Rochester, 2020
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