Matthew E. Monk

Matthew E. Monk is the Linda Eaton Associate Curator of Textiles and serves as an Affiliated Assistant Professor in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (WPAMC). Matt brings a holistic and global approach to the study of textiles in America with focuses on process as evidence, structural analysis, craft, technology, and materiality. He has taught a variety of history and museum studies courses at the University of Delaware. At Winterthur, Matt teaches textile history and analysis in the Materials Block Seminar taken by first-year fellows, directs independent study courses, supervises internships, works closely with visiting fellows, and advises WPAMC Fellows' theses. 
 
Matt is a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware in the History of American Civilization. His forthcoming dissertation is titled, “A Useable Past: The Creation of an Appalachian Identity and the American Handweaving Revival, 1890-1940." Matt is proudly from Appalachian Virginia and comes from a long line of rural craftspeople
in that region who imparted the importance of older modes of making and doing at an early age. He is a maker himself and incorporates tactile learning into his educational and interpretative work whenever possible. You will not just learn about objects but learn to make them in Matt's courses. Making is the best, and often first, entry-point for textile scholarship. Knowing how things are made can not only help us appreciate and understand what we are seeing, but it also informs the kinds of questions we ask about objects. Textiles are universalizing. We are surrounded by them all the time. They provide us with comfort and protection and communicate who we are, where we come from, and what we have access to. Textiles tie together and harmonize interior spaces, and the materials they are made from and motifs they depict contain important global histories of trade, power, commerce, and cultural awareness. 
 
Matt holds a BA in History and Medieval and Renaissance Studies from the University of Tennessee, an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto's Centre for Medieval Studies, and a MA in Decorative Arts and Design History from George Washington University-Smithsonian Program. He has worked with or held fellowships at a number of cultural institutions including the Southern Highland Craft Guild, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Architect of the Capitol, MFA-Boston, Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation, Decorative Arts Trust, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, and many more.