Temple University

Molly Mapstone (she/her/hers) is a Ph.D. Candidate studying American art. Her dissertation, “Mediating Vision and Negotiating Narratives: Contemporary U.S. Installation Art and Its Expanding Publics, 1966–2019,” investigates key works of installation from a perspective that centers media created by the viewing public. She is also interested in unconventional materials new to the history of art, in particular, plastics.

She previously worked as the Editorial Assistant for Winterthur Portfolio, an interdisciplinary journal of American material culture. She has held fellowships with Harvard Art Museums and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She recently taught Arts of the World I: Prehistoric to 1300 and Arts of the World II: 1300 to Present. She also developed and taught Art After the Internet, a new course that explores post-internet art and the relationship between the digital and material world. Her master’s thesis at the Winterthur Program, “The Materiality and Art History of Glitter,” examined the material’s origins, social history and power to convey meaning. She received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison while working at the Chazen Museum of Art as the Print Room Assistant where she curated exhibitions of works on paper.
 

M.A. American Material Culture, University of Delaware and the Winterthur Program (2021)
B.A. Art History and French, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2019) 

Primary Advisor: Erin Pauwels, PhD