Michelle Nordtorp-Madson named chief curator
Dr. Michelle Nordtorp-Madson, assistant professor of art history at the University of St. Thomas, has been named the university’s chief curator.
The chief curator manages the university’s art collection – hundreds of monumental, decorative and thematic works that include wood and metal sculptures, stained glass, prints from the medieval through modern periods, religious and secular paintings, textiles and pottery (primarily of African and American Indian origins). The curator also is responsible for the campus exhibitions program and acquisition recommendations.
Nordtorp-Madson, of Edina, joined the university in 1994 as an adjunct instructor of art history. She since has served as director of collections and exhibitions, chaired the Art Exhibitions Task Force and joined the regular art history faculty. She has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art history and Scandinavian studies from the University of Minnesota, where she earned her Ph.D. in design, housing and apparel in 1990. She also studied at Bloch Tilskær Institut and Århus University in Denmark.
Nordtorp-Madson serves on the editorial board of the Boydell and Brewer series Medieval Costume and Textiles, and she also has taught at the University of Minnesota, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Hamline University. She was an art librarian for the Department of Design, Housing and Apparel at the University of Minnesota from 1981 to 1992, and she was a curatorial assistant at the University of Museum’s Goldstein Museum of Design from 1981 to 1990.
