about me...curator, writer, scholar, arts project manager, artist
// Contemporary Craft Samantha De Tillio is a Hudson Valley-based curator, writer, scholar, and arts practitioner who specializes in modern and contemporary American craft and material culture. Her research interests include the intersection of glass and performance, fiber art, performance craft, women's studies, and radical alternative histories. She is dedicated to uplifting the work of women artists, past and present. De Tillio is Curator of Collections at the Museum of Arts and Design, where she oversees, researches, and exhibits the permanent collection, and manages the acquisitions program. She is project director for the forthcoming semi-permanent exhibition Craft Front & Center, which will feature the museum's collection for years to come. |
Haystack School of Crafts, 2019
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She is also Contributing Editor of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly, where she writes on themes of performance, gender, and ecology as it relates to glass. She is currently writing a three-part series on glass and performance from the mid-twentieth century through today, the first article "Cold and Hot: Performative Art, Craft, and Glass in the Twentieth Century" is in the Summer 2022 issue. Her writing has also been published in Metalsmith, and the Journal of Stained Glass, and in numerous exhibition catalogues.
De Tillio is engaged in ongoing research on the groundbreaking fiber artist Dorian Zachai (1932-2015), which she presented at the 2019 College Art Association conference. The first in-depth study of the artist's life and work, De Tillio has stewarded the accession of ten works by the artist in the permanent collection of MAD.
She has coined another line of inquiry she is passionate about "crafted lifeways" or the role craft can play in facilitating creative and regenerative lifestyles in harmony with the greater ecosystem, including material literacy, the intersection of art and craft with bioregionalism, and food and cooking. These values are central to De Tillio's own life.
De Tillio has a MA in the History of Decorative Arts from the Smithsonian Associates with George Mason University, and a BA in History from the University at Albany with minors in Ancient Greek and Roman Civilizations, and Spanish; she also studied drawing and painting. She has held various curatorial and research positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, and the Albany Institute of History and Art.
De Tillio is a member of the Public Programming Committee at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn and a Board Member-at-Large for R'Ville Stage Creations, a community theater in Upstate New York. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and son.
De Tillio is engaged in ongoing research on the groundbreaking fiber artist Dorian Zachai (1932-2015), which she presented at the 2019 College Art Association conference. The first in-depth study of the artist's life and work, De Tillio has stewarded the accession of ten works by the artist in the permanent collection of MAD.
She has coined another line of inquiry she is passionate about "crafted lifeways" or the role craft can play in facilitating creative and regenerative lifestyles in harmony with the greater ecosystem, including material literacy, the intersection of art and craft with bioregionalism, and food and cooking. These values are central to De Tillio's own life.
De Tillio has a MA in the History of Decorative Arts from the Smithsonian Associates with George Mason University, and a BA in History from the University at Albany with minors in Ancient Greek and Roman Civilizations, and Spanish; she also studied drawing and painting. She has held various curatorial and research positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, and the Albany Institute of History and Art.
De Tillio is a member of the Public Programming Committee at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn and a Board Member-at-Large for R'Ville Stage Creations, a community theater in Upstate New York. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and son.
