Elissa Auther

Elisa Auther is the Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City.

Education
Auther received her B.A. from San Francisco State University, and her Ph.D. in History of Art from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Career
Auther was at the University of Colorado where she was an associate professor of contemporary art and director of the art history and museum studies program from 2003– 2014. In 2014 she moved to the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. In 2019 Auther was named deputy director of Curatorial Affairs and the William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Work
Her book "String, Felt Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art" (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) was known for its revisionist history in re-contextualizing craft in recent contemporary art. Auther co-curated with Bill Arning the retrospective of painter and photographer Marilyn Minter, "Pretty/Dirty" (2015–2016), which toured four cities and closed at the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.