"What is Curatorial Practice?" A Conversation with Elena Gonzales. Ph.D.

Elena Gonzales, Ph.D., is an independent scholar and curator focusing on curatorial work for social justice and museums’ roles in society today and the author of Exhibitions for Social Justice from Routledge’s Museum Meanings Series (2019). Gonzales received her doctorate in American Studies at Brown University in 2015. Her dissertation is entitled Museums Working for Social Justice: Resonance and Wonder. In 2012, Gonzales was a Ford Dissertation Fellow. From 2011 to 2015, she was a visiting scholar at Northwestern University in American Studies. Gonzales received her Masters in Public Humanities from Brown in 2010. She has curated exhibitions since 2006 and has taught curatorial studies since 2010.

Now she is co-chair of the exhibitions committee at the Evanston Art Center where she guides the planning of an annual schedule of more than 20 exhibitions per year. For spring 2020, Gonzales is a scholar in residence at Northwestern University in the School of Education and Social Policy. She is also co-editor of Museums and Civic Discourse: History, Current Practice, and Future Prospects, digital public humanities project forthcoming from Greenhouse Studios with generous support from the Whiting Foundation and the University of Connecticut’s Humanities Institute.

Elena Gonzales, Ph.D., is an independent scholar and curator focusing on curatorial work for social justice and museums’ roles in society today. She is the author of Exhibitions for Social Justice from Routledge’s Museum Meanings Series (2019). She has curated exhibitions since 2006 and has taught curatorial studies since 2010. She guides the planning of an annual schedule of more than 20 exhibitions per year at the Evanston Art Center. Gonzales is co-editor of Museums and Civic Discourse: History, Current Practice, and Future Prospects, digital public humanities project forthcoming from Greenhouse Studios.