An Indiana University Bloomington student in the Master of Arts in curatorship program is showcasing the legacy of Indiana women in the arts by helping an area arts organization with an upcoming exhibition.
Grant DiDomizio is curating “Indiana Women Artists: A Creative Legacy” as an intern for the Brown County Art Guild. The exhibition, which runs through June 29, showcases these artists’ impact across styles and eras and highlights their groundbreaking work. Some of the featured women have important ties to Indiana University.
“My desire in graduating with this degree is to hopefully be able to find a museum job within the tri-state region of the Evansville area, and to help continue to preserve, interpret and promote its history, art and culture from the personal, social and economic perspectives,” he said.
DiDomizio said he grew up loving the arts. After taking art classes for years and working as a tour guide at the New Harmony historic site, he knew he wanted to continue that passion.
“I like the intersectionality” of IU’s curatorship program, he said. “It’s not just fine arts, but there is a focus on museums, where I have found my niche the last few years, and there is a perspective of community engagement.”
Interdisciplinary program
The Master of Arts in curatorship was approved as a graduate program in 2019 and began accepting students in 2020. The program brings together students from a range of academic backgrounds and intellectual interests and exposes them to the ideas and practices necessary to collect, care for, interpret and share the objects of the world, said Eric Sandweiss, faculty director of the curatorship program.
Students share a core of common classes offered by the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and the College of Arts and Sciences that familiarize them with the history and basic practices of collections and museums. Students design their own paths based on their individually selected disciplinary concentration.
Each student enters a sequence of personalized practicum projects, carrying out work in one of IU’s or another institution’s collections. This culminates with a capstone project in which each student pursues a plan of their own design and presents it through an exhibition, public program or other format.
“Our graduates have gone on to work in a range of roles in museums, historical sites, universities and other collections; some have chosen to continue their passion through doctoral work,” Sandweiss said.
DiDomizio is a good example of how curatorship students often find and fill a niche and help community partners with their needs and goals, Sandweiss said.
“Grant jumped right in with his practicum work, finding an opportunity in Brown County that fitted his interests and experience,” the professor said.
Hands-on experience
Brown County Art Guild Director Sean Hildreth said DiDomizio reached out to him about an internship opportunity. The organization had just undergone a major renovation effort, and several projects needed attention.
In the fall 2024 semester, DiDomizio focused on database management of more than 600 images of artwork and other historical items in the Brown County Art Guild’s collection. He had to upload the images to a new software system that improves internal access and could potentially be used for public online views of collections.
The focus this semester has been on DiDomizio’s capstone project, which is the “Indiana Women Artists: A Creative Legacy” exhibition. The Brown County Art Guild’s permanent collection was created through the estate of one of the founding artists, Marie Goth, and was the main impetus for this contextual exhibition, DiDomizio said. Goth’s portraiture, prolific in the Brown County art colony with its strong IU art connection from the 1910s to 1950s, is featured at IU locations such as the Biddle Hotel.
Hildreth said DiDomizio helped secure loans of artworks from other collections around the state, including from the Richmond Art Museum, the Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science and the Tri-Kappa Art Collection at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
About 20 pieces will be on display, including works by women who were founders of the Brown County Art Guild. In addition to Goth, some of the other featured artists with IU ties include:
- Susan Merrill Ketcham, whose work is in IU’s collections. She also helped found the Arts Association of Indianapolis that eventually morphed into the Herron School of Art and Design at IU Indianapolis.
- Ada Walter Shulz, who is known for her depictions of children and animals such as the ones in IU Auditorium.
- Elizabeth Stouder, who got her degree in nursing at IU and has an abstract work featured at the Indiana Memorial Union.
DiDomizio wrote the text that will accompany each work, including the title, the artist’s name and biographical information, and key information about the art and its style. He also helped create a map of where each artist is from and will lead a special talk about the exhibition and its artists on April 5 at the T.C. Steele site.
“I think Grant has been an excellent intern and resource,” Hildreth said. “His knowledge of Indiana artists is wonderful. He’s brought fresh ideas. He’s done a great job reaching out to key organizations. He gets along with our staff very well.”
Hildreth said he would be open to hiring more students in IU’s curatorship program for future internships.
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