Historian to head Museum Studies Program

Katherine (Kasey) Grier, AS ’88PhD, has been named director of UD’s Museum Studies Program and professor of history, bringing a wealth of experience as a historian, scholar and teacher to her new assignment.

The appointments are effective this fall. Museum Studies is an interdisciplinary program, which will now be housed in the history department.

“We in the history department are delighted that the Museum Studies Program is now officially part of the department and that we have Kasey Grier as the new director,” Carole Haber, then Richards Professor of History and department chairperson, said at the time of the announcement.

“Her knowledge of the museum world is great, her scholarship is outstanding, and her enthusiasm infectious. Under her guidance, the program will undoubtedly increase its ties to the community and attract the best students. It will surely become the leading academic program in the nation for museum education.”

Grier has been serving as professor of material culture studies for UD’s Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate, where she is the director of its Research Fellows Program and executive editor of Winterthur Portfolio: the Journal of American Material Culture.

Before coming to Winterthur, Grier was an associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina and co-director of its Certificate Program in Museum Management. During her career, she served as the historian of the Strong Museum in Rochester, N.Y., and taught at the State University of New York at Brockport. She also was curator and guest curator of exhibitions in Texas and Pennsylvania.

Grier’s research centers on the history of everyday life in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, most recently focusing on the relationships between people and animals.