Where Are They Now? Featured DELPHI Alumni: Dr. Katie Wood Kirchhoff

Katie Wood Kirchhoff was a participant in the Delaware Public Humanities Institute in 2010. She currently lives in Shelburne, Vermont, and is the Associate Curator at the Shelburne Museum. Some of her recent publications and exhibitions include: “Painting A Nation: American Art at Shelburne Museum,” “Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography,” “Upstream with Ogden Pleissner,” “Pieced Traditions: Jean Lovell Collects,” “Hooked on Patty Yoder,” and “Carpet Diem: Molly Nye Tobey Designs for the Mid-Century Home.” Katie describes her position as Associate Curator as “the business of sharing objects and stories with a wide range of people.” Beyond exhibitions, she develops training materials for the museum’s staff, researches and publishes about the museum’s vast collection, and takes the collection on the road through lectures and public programs, sharing ideas and stories with folks who might not otherwise be able to make it to the museum’s campus. Katie reflects: “My job requires me to know how to craft intelligent, articulate, and accessible content for audiences who might possess vastly different learning styles. DELPHI drove home the point that there is more than one way to argue for why objects matter, and the program gave me useful tools for considering what the best ways to illuminate object stories might be relative to the audience du jour.”

Shelburne Museum