Staff Profile

Madeline Murphy Turner is a curator and art historian originally from New York City. At the Harvard Art Museums, she aims to expand the representation of artists through her work on special exhibitions, research of the collections, and teaching. Her current research and curatorial project, the installation Drawn to Earth: Contemporary Art and Environment in the Americas, looks at how contemporary artists across the Americas are using the practice of drawing and expanding the medium’s definition to explore topics of environmental crisis, territory, and landscape. Turner has previously held positions at the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Grey Art Museum, at New York University. She has taught courses on modern and contemporary art at New York University and published in books, peer-reviewed journals, and online platforms. She is the Fall 2024 Visiting Curator at the Boston Center for the Arts. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she wrote a dissertation on experimental networks of women artists in 1980s Mexico City.