Museums as Producers of Meaning

Cynthia Fowler is an art historian with a specialization in American modern art. She received her PhD from the University of Delaware in 2002 and is professor of art at Emmanuel College. Her book, Hooked Rugs: Encounters in American Modern Art, Craft and Design (Ashgate, 2013), reflects her interest in the contribution of textiles and other forms of craft production to the development of modern art. As a feminist art historian, Fowler has published essays on a variety of women artists, including modernist painter and embroiderer Marguerite Zorach, fiber artist Sheila Hicks and post-minimalist sculptor Brenda Miller. Locating American Art: Finding Meaning in Art Museums (Ashgate, 2016), edited by Fowler, considers the various ways in which the location of a work of art shapes its meaning. Her most recent book, The Modern Embroidery Movement (Bloomsbury, 2018) examines the modernist textiles produced by a group of American women artists in the first half of the twentieth century. Fowler has received fellowships and grants from the Smithsonian Institution, the Winterthur Museum, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Craft Creativity and Design, and the Society for the Preservation of American Modernism.