Meet the curators
A peek behind the curtain at the future of the collection.
Colin Fanning is Assistant Curator in the Department of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His research and curatorial interests cover a broad range of design, craft, and architecture from the mid-1800s to the present, with some narrower focuses including the history of design education, the material culture of childhood, and the visual and material cultures of spaceflight. He received a BFA in interior design from Syracuse University and an MA from Bard Graduate Center, where he is also currently a PhD Candidate completing a dissertation on the late-twentieth-century history and impact of the graduate design program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Colin has held previous internships and curatorial roles at the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design, and the American Federation of Arts. He was also a curatorial fellow in European Decorative Arts at the PMA from 2014–17 and a consulting curator for the museum from 2017–19. He has curated and co-curated several PMA exhibitions and collection shows, including The Architecture of Francis Kéré: Building for Community (2016); Design Currents: Oki Sato, Faye Toogood, Zanini de Zanine (2016–17); Dieter Rams: Principled Design (2018–19); Designs for Different Futures (2019–20), and, most recently, Rhythms of Nature: The Art and Design of DRIFT (2022).
Alisa Chiles is currently an Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she helps oversee the collection of decorative arts from Europe after 1700 and the museum’s global design collection. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Stanford University, an M.A. in Art History from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and is currently completing her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores the influence of nationalism on design, the impact of new materials and mechanization on the development of modern architecture, and the relationship between decorative arts and architecture. She has taught and lectured at the University of Pennsylvania and Bryn Mawr College and written on topics related to Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and the Bauhaus. Alisa was previously the PMA’s Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in European Decorative Arts and Sculpture from 2019-20, where she helped with the reinstallation of the museum’s 19th century galleries. Prior to coming to Philadelphia, she worked in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, assisting with numerous projects, including the 2009 exhibition, “Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution.” She has also worked for the George Nakashima Foundation and held fellowships and internships at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts.