Dana Ostrander has been appointed assistant curator of modern art at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. She will begin March 13.
Following a major expansion in 2019, which included new and renovated galleries, the Kemper Art Museum doubled the space allotted for display of its renowned permanent collection. Ostrander will help to shape the museum’s exhibition and collection program, with a focus on pre-1950s art through a global postcolonial lens. The position also offers opportunities to develop exhibitions and publications, and to research and expand the permanent collection with an emphasis on historically underrepresented artists.
Prior to joining the Kemper Art Museum, Ostrander was a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. There, she organized the permanent collection gallery “Modern Times” and assisted with the exhibitions “Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946–1964” and “Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum.” She also has held curatorial roles at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in addition to lecturing at Eastern Illinois University.
Ostrander earned a bachelor’s degree in art history and English from Wellesley College as well as a master’s and doctorate in art history from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include global modernisms, art of the Americas, photography and medicine, and art made by underrepresented, marginalized or amateur artists. Her writing will be included in the forthcoming edited volume “Modernism, Art, Therapy” (2024) and previously has been published in the exhibition catalogue “Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum” (2022) and the peer-reviewed “Lapis: The Journal of the Institute of Fine Arts.”
