BIOGRAPHY

Melissa Wolfe, Curator of American Art Columbus Museum of Art

M. Melissa Wolfe is the Curator of American Art at the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) in Ohio. At the CMA, she has organized a wide variety of exhibitions and oversaw the purchase of the Phillip J. and Suzanne Schiller Collection of American Social Commentary Art (1930-1970). She has curated and co-curated the exhibitions American Impressionism, American Indian Portraits: Elbridge Ayer Burbank in the West (1892-1906), George Tooker: A Retrospective, In Monet’s Garden: The Lure of Giverny, as well as exhibitions on local artists Sid Chafetz and Gilda Edwards. Dr. Wolfe has recently contributed the essays “Joe Jones. Worker-Artist” for the exhibition catalogue Joe Jones: Painter of the American Scene for the St. Louis Art Museum, and “Calling the Shots: Photography and Painting in the American West” to the exhibition catalogue Shared Intelligence: Painting and Photography in American Art for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Dr. Wolfe received her Ph.D. in art history from The Ohio State University, where she also teaches courses in 20th-century American art, African American art and museum studies. Her dissertation, ‘Proving Up’ in Custer County, Nebraska: Identity, Power, and History in the Solomon D. Butcher Photographic Archive (1886-1892), was supported by a Henry Luce Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and a Presidential Dissertation Fellowship from Ohio State, and has been accepted for publication by the University of Oklahoma Press. Dr. Wolfe has been an invited lecturer at various institutions including Yale University, the University of Oklahoma and the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian Studies at the Newberry Library.