Frances Cathryn
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06. About
Research
Writing
Curatorial projects
Editing
Guest lectures & teaching
Contact


Frances Cathryn is an art historian who studies the ways American culture shapes a common understanding of the past. Through her curatorial projects, editorial work, and critical writing, Frances contributes to debates in art history concerning place-based memory, the ethics of representation, and the role of material culture in mediating unresolved pasts within the present. Across her work, Frances emphasizes collaborative and public-facing methodologies that reconsider how historical narratives are constructed and circulated within U.S. art and cultural discourse.


Photograph by Michael Valiquette.
03.Curatorial projects
Frances’s curatorial projects engage material culture and site-specific histories, foregrounding collaborative and public-facing approaches that critically rethink how collective memory is articulated within contemporary cultural institutions.

Selected exhibitions:
  1. In the Room, the Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, January–February 2025
  2. In the Room, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Kingston, New York, June–July 2023
  3. The Middle Distance, the Barbara Walters Gallery at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, Jan–April 2025


1/3    Installation view of In the Room at The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, 2025. Courtesy McKinzie Trotta.
2/3    Installation view of In the Room at The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, 2025. Courtesy McKinzie Trotta.
3/3    Installation view of In the Room at The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, 2025. Courtesy McKinzie Trotta.