“I think a lot about how objects can open up much wider possibilities for historical storytelling.”

In This Episode
Ivan Gaskell speaks to curator, art historian, and professor Sarah Anne Carter about how objects illuminate hidden histories. Carter articulates the importance of collaboration and interdisciplinarity in curation, teaching, and writing. Through recalling her own educational trajectory she highlights the central role objects can play in learning.

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Sarah Anne Carter is the Visiting Executive Director of the Center for Design and Material Culture in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She previously served as the Curator and Director of Research at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While at Chipstone, she collaboratively curated many innovative museum exhibitions, including Mrs. M.——-‘s Cabinet at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and directed Chipstone’s Think Tank Program in support of progressive curatorial practice. Carter wrote Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World (OUP 2018) and she is co-author of Tangible Things: Making History Through Objects (OUP 2015). Along with co-editor Ivan Gaskell, they published The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture earlier this year. Carter received her PhD in American Studies from Harvard and an MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture.

References

• Ivan Gaskell
• Sarah Anne Carter
• Chipstone Foundation
• Center for Design and Material Culture, University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Winterthur Program for American Material Culture
• James Deetz
• Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
• Tangible Things 1, 2
• Sara Schechner
• The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture
• Dakota Mace