Mission and History
The University of Delaware and the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate established the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture in 1952. Then known as the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, it was the first graduate program dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of material culture and the decorative arts in the United States. It has continued its leading role in museum and academic scholarship and its graduates hold key positions in academic institutions, government, libraries, museums, and preservation organizations. In 2007, the Program's Executive Committee voted to adopt a new name to reflect the fact that students and faculty studied all periods of American cultural history, not just those deemed early.

The Program's commitment to excellence and its national and international reputation is amplified by a constellation of distinguished Departments, Programs and Faculty that make the University of Delaware the unparalleled center for the study of material culture in the United States. These include: The Departments of Anthropology, Art History, English, History, and the Winterthur University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation; the Center for Historic Architecture and Design, the University-Hagley Program, The Museum Studies Program, the Ph.D. Program in the History of American Civilization, and the Preservation Studies Program.

Material culture scholars study the history and philosophy of people and their things. The Winterthur Program's special niche is its emphasis on the interdisciplinary study of ideas, objects, and contexts using the extraordinary collections of the Winterthur Museum, and field-based study of landscapes, buildings, decorative arts, and design. No other program offers the same range of hands-on study of objects at either a Master's or Doctoral level.

Speaking of material culture . . .

Delaware has been a leader in this field for over half a century, since the founding of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. Its faculty and students have been in the forefront in expanding the field beyond its initial emphasis on the connoisseurship of decorative arts to encompass the entire human-made artifactual world in its social, aesthetic, and symbolic dimensions.

Delaware is unique among the small group of important material-culture studies institutions in being able to draw not only on a range of academic departments, but also on the educational, scholarly, and artifactual strengths of two major museums, Winterthur and Hagley, and to a lesser extent on a range of other art and history museums in close proximity.

Dell Upton

Over time the Winterthur Program itself has grown beyond its early American roots, and its students are now encouraged to study material culture of all periods and all classes and contexts.

Beverly Gordon

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