Episode 19: Olivia Miller

This WAIA Wednesday, the inspiring and incredibly thoughtful curator Olivia Miller discusses de Kooning's 'slashed' women, opportunities and challenges of working in a smaller city, the inspirational significance of women-led art organizations, the contextual power of a museum, the return to craft and fiber arts in this age of AI, and an artist's original intentions versus the ever-changing meaning of their work itself. Olivia Miller is the Interim Director and Curator at the University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) where she has worked since 2012, curating or co-curating more than 30 exhibitions. She has contributed scholarship for exhibition catalogues and regularly presents her research at academic conferences. As an arts educator, she has taught at the University of Arizona’s Humanities Seminars Program, the Arizona State Prison Complex, Osher Life-Long Learning Institute, and Pima Community College. Her most recent exhibition is Restored: The Return of Woman-Ochre, which traces the incredible story of Willem de Kooning’s stolen, recovered, and recently conserved painting. She is currently co-curating a solo exhibition of Diné weaver and painter, Marlowe Katoney, which is supported by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art and will open at UAMA in October, 2023.