Michelle Donnelly is an art historian and curator, specializing in twentieth-century U.S. art and histories of printmaking. She is the Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia. In her curatorial practice, she seeks to center women artists and artists of color whose work foregrounds issues of gender, race, and power.​ Prior to joining PAFA, Michelle was the inaugural Curatorial Fellow in the Sondra Gilman Study Center at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she curated Experiments in Electrostatics: Photocopy Art from the Whitney's Collection, 1966–1986 (2017–18). She has also held curatorial positions at the Yale Center for British Art, Morgan Library & Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Heckscher Museum of Art.

 

Michelle's research interests include the politics of materiality and process, feminist practices of care, placemaking and site specificity, and constructions of race. Her doctoral dissertation investigated how American women artists and artists of color expanded the parameters of printmaking outside the traditional space of the workshop from 1935 to 1977. With critical attention to how acts of making can generate meaning, she participated in the 2022 Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art at the Harvard Art Museums, where she gained a hands-on knowledge of a range of artmaking processes from conservators, printers, and artists. In addition, her research has been supported by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the Menil Drawing Institute, UCLA Library Special Collections, Louisiana State University Libraries, and the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

 

Michelle’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Grey Room, Woman’s Art Journal, The Public Review, and Pennsylvania History, as well as publications by the Getty Research Institute, Museum of Modern Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Yale School of Art. She has presented internationally, including at the College Art Association Annual Conference, Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art World Congress, Feminist Art History Conference at American University, Hammer Museum, the Menil Collection, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, University of Delaware, and Yale University Art Gallery.

 

Michelle earned a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University, an MA in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Art History with Honors from Vassar College.