about me . . .
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Samantha De Tillio is a craft scholar, cross-genre writer, and curator thinking at the crossroads of craft, embodied expression, folk traditions, and Earth-centered living. She is interested in the confluence of art practice and life practice, and the interweaving of the everyday sacred.
She is the preeminent authority on the intersection of glass and performance art and won the Lois Moran Award for Craft Writing for her trailblazing research on the subject, which charts the sub-genre from the mid-twentith century to today. The scholarly triptych was published in GLASS: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly, where she is a contributing editor. De Tillio's other work for GLASS include artist features and thematic texts that take a feminist and ecocritical point-of-view. She has also been published in Metalsmith - where she's written on topics including cooking, automata, and reliquaries - the Journal of Stained Glass, and various museum catalogues and artist books. In 2023, she was guest curator/editor of New Glass Review 43, an exhibition-in-print, published annually by the Corning Museum of Glass; she is an editor for NGR 44. De Tillio has over a decade of experience as a museum curator, working with institutions such as the Corning Museum of Glass, Museum of Arts and Design, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, among others. Her scope of experience includes modern and contemporary American Craft and visual culture with an emphasis on postwar glass and the evolution of the craft movement from the Arts and Crafts to today. From 2013 to 2022, De Tillio was a curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, where she ended her tenure as Curator of Collections. During that time, she oversaw, researched, and exhibited the permanent collection (among other temporary loan exhibitions), and managed the acquisitions program. She curated and project managed over a dozen exhibitions and permanent collection installations; produced and contributed to four exhibition catalogues; and facilitated the accessions of over three hundred artworks. Her projects include Beth Lipman: Collective Elegy, Burke Prize 2018 and 2019, Craft Front & Center, Wendell Castle Remastered, The Green Book: Race and Segregstion in Jim Crow America (an exhibition and study center), a reinstallation of the museum's permanent display of Studio Glass goblets, among numerous other projects. |
Haystack School of Crafts, 2019
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De Tillio is engaged in ongoing research on the groundbreaking fiber artist Dorian Zachai (1932-2015), the first study of the artist's life and work, which she presented at the 2019 College Art Association conference.
De Tillio's interests also include the praxis of "crafted lifeways" or the creative potential of craft to contribute to regenerative lifestyles and bioregionalism including through material literacy and folk practices, such as heritage craft and foodways, in particular the craft of cooking and its relational identities.
From 2012 to 2013, she was Tiffany & Company Foundation Curatorial Intern in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she contributed to the reinstallation of the Arts & Crafts galleries, the installation of the Worsham-Rockefeller period room, an exhibition of George Schastey aesthetic furniture, and curated an exhibit of works on paper by Louis C. Tiffany. She has also held various curatorial and research positions at 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, and has also curated independent projects.
De Tillio has lectured widely, including at the College Art Association conference and the Bard Graduate Center; was a visiting artist at the Rochester Institute of Technology; and has juried numerous exhibitions, residencies, and prizes.
She 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.
De Tillio is Board President of R'ville Stage Creations, a community theater in Upstate New York. Her personal practice includes reading, cooking, embroidery, drumming, gardening, drawing, and shrine making. She is keeper of ancestral knowledge and family heirlooms and most notably is a mother and wife.
De Tillio's interests also include the praxis of "crafted lifeways" or the creative potential of craft to contribute to regenerative lifestyles and bioregionalism including through material literacy and folk practices, such as heritage craft and foodways, in particular the craft of cooking and its relational identities.
From 2012 to 2013, she was Tiffany & Company Foundation Curatorial Intern in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she contributed to the reinstallation of the Arts & Crafts galleries, the installation of the Worsham-Rockefeller period room, an exhibition of George Schastey aesthetic furniture, and curated an exhibit of works on paper by Louis C. Tiffany. She has also held various curatorial and research positions at 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, and has also curated independent projects.
De Tillio has lectured widely, including at the College Art Association conference and the Bard Graduate Center; was a visiting artist at the Rochester Institute of Technology; and has juried numerous exhibitions, residencies, and prizes.
She 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.
De Tillio is Board President of R'ville Stage Creations, a community theater in Upstate New York. Her personal practice includes reading, cooking, embroidery, drumming, gardening, drawing, and shrine making. She is keeper of ancestral knowledge and family heirlooms and most notably is a mother and wife.
