About
My early experiences of place-based narratives and regional identity form my understanding of public history and the institutions that maintain it: My mother worked part-time in the local history museum before I started Kindergarten while my father worked night shifts at General Motors. When childcare was hard to find, she would bring me with her. I got my first job there, where I worked every summer until college, the museum being one of few opportunities to earn money in the rural Wisconsin town where I grew up. As I learned then, traditional institutions like museums serve an important role in a community by preserving local identity. At the same time, they can easily become fixed, and no longer reflect the values of the communities they serve.Institutions are not too big or established to evolve, however fixed, and instead of falling into feelings of cynicism or powerlessness, I am motivated to expose the points I can leverage for reform. These days, when I’m not campaigning to remove monuments in a local public park or protesting weapons manufacturers who sit on the board at the Whitney, you can find me meeting friends for coffee or walking my dog where I now live with my partner in Kingston, New York.
Short biography
Frances Cathryn is a writer and curator based in Kingston, New York. Her criticism on topics ranging from the myth of American exceptionalism to marginalized historical landscapes has been featured in such publications as Frieze, Art Papers, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Brooklyn Rail, and Social Text journal, among others. Frances has curated projects exhibited at the Center for Photography at Woodstock and the Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, Sarah Lawrence College. In 2025, Frances joined the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University to begin her doctoral research focusing on the ways contemporary culture shapes a common understanding of the past. In addition to her academic research, Frances manages editorial projects at Forge Project and sits on the board of her public library.