Join us on the opening day of Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births for a guided tour with the exhibition’s curators. Designing Motherhood first opened in 2021 at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum and is now newly expanded and making its New York debut at MAD. In addition to touring the country, the Designing Motherhood collaboration has grown in scope to include a book, a series of public programs, a design curriculum, and an Instagram account. The guided tour will be led by MAD Associate Curator Elizabeth Koehn and two curators on the Designing Motherhood team, Juliana Rowena Barton and Michelle Millar Fisher.

Space is limited. Registration in advance is strongly recommended.

About the Curators

Juliana Rowen Barton, PhD is a curator and cultural organizer based in Providence, RI. Through her research and projects, she explores the confluence of race, gender, and design and invests in community-engaged creative practices. Barton is the Director of the Center for the Arts at Northeastern University, where she facilitates interdisciplinary arts programming and oversees the University's contemporary art space, Gallery 360. She also co-organizes Designing Motherhood, an award-winning book (MIT Press, 2021), touring exhibition and open-source curriculum that considers design and the arc of human reproduction. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from the Graham Foundation, CASVA, ACLS, Center for Curatorial Leadership, and Mellon Foundation. Throughout her career, she has worked on exhibitions and programs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, ArkDes, Center for Craft, Museum of Art and Design, Center for Architecture, and Museum of Modern Art, among others, and been a Lecturer at the Weitzman School of Design. Barton received her BA in American Studies with highest distinction from the University of Virginia and her MA and PhD in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania.

Michelle Millar Fisher, PhD is currently the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and has worked in cultural institutions for two decades including at MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She leads an independent team on a book, touring exhibition, and program series called “Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births.” She has a particular expertise in craft, ranging from material-specific making and craft pedagogy to the craft of care work. She holds an MA and an M.Phil in Art History from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and received an M.Phil and PhD from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). She publishes and teaches widely, and has received fellowships from the Pew, Sachs, Luce, and Graham Foundations, and DAAD, among others.