An enriching graduate experience coupled with a passion for academic museums and galleries has led alumna Laura Libert (MA ’15) to her current position as Director of the Lore Degenstein Gallery at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania.
After completing her master’s degree in Art History at FSU, Laura traveled to central Pennsylvania for a two-year curatorial fellowship at the Samek Art Museum at Bucknell University. Mentored by museum director Richard Rinehart, Laura was involved in every aspect of exhibition planning, from ideation through installation and related programming. She was also given the opportunity to plan, curate, and execute her own exhibitions in the museum’s satellite gallery in downtown Lewisburg.
She next joined the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, assisting the museum’s five curators with exhibition scheduling, research, loans, installation, and grants administration. Her work with various museum and university departments resulted in valuable professional development, most notably an installation she co-curated in conjunction with Cornell’s Computing and Information Science department and the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell’s library. The exhibition, Digital Technology in Art: Celebrating 20 Years of CIS at Cornell, featured works from the museum’s permanent collection that are indebted to advancements in the computer and information sciences.
Laura fostered her personal passion for sustainability at the Johnson, by starting the museum’s first green team, which focused on providing sustainability-focused staff and student intern engagement programs and initiatives. For sustainability month in 2021, she supervised several museum interns who wrote a series of posts for the museum’s website, in which they selected works in the permanent collection and contextualized them through the vein of a pressing environmental issue. Through these articles, the interns engaged with works that directly addressed topics such as climate change and wealth inequality, as well as pieces with less direct connections, which required a deeper level of analysis and interpretation.
In her current position at Susquehanna University, Laura plans and executes four exhibitions and related programming per academic year; manages a staff of gallery assistants; trains and mentors gallery interns; and she teaches art history survey courses in the department of Art and Design. Her passion for sustainability continues through her curated exhibitions and programming, as she ardently believes that cultural centers are pivotal voices in the conversation around sustainability, and that academic galleries in particular are spaces that encourage dialogue and engagement with complex ideas, and engender respect and appreciation for multiple perspectives.
Most recently, she curated and wrote an accompanying catalog for the exhibition Flow, on view during the fall of 2023. Inspired by environmental ethics, Flow explored the earth’s paramount resource, water, beyond its use-value as a commodity. Featured artists utilized storytelling, community engagement, and sensory experience to contemplate the other meanings water holds for us personally, socially, and spiritually.
Laura writes,
“I am particularly grateful for the academic rigor my professors in the FSU Art History master’s program encouraged. I apply the critical thinking and research skills I cultivated during my time as FSU to the exhibitions I curate and the classes I teach, and I push my undergraduate students and interns to develop those same skills in their classes and gallery-related projects.”
