email contact: Jessica.cooley@marquette.edu

Jessica A. Cooley (she/hers) is a scholar-curator working at the intersection of curatorial and museum studies, disability studies and crip theory, and Modern and contemporary art. Cooley holds a PhD in art history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first book project centers on what she calls “crip materiality” and will forward a new methodology to address how ableism affects the understanding and valuation of the very fibers of art materials within curatorial and conservation discourses. Cooley was a guest curator for the Ford Foundation Art Gallery from 2020 – 2022 where she co-curated (with Ann M. Fox) a multi-year online and physical exhibition titled Indisposable. From 2006–2010, she was the assistant curator at Davidson College’s Van Every/Smith Galleries where she curated numerous exhibitions including RE/FORMATIONS: Disability, Women, and Sculpture. Currently, Cooley is the Postdoctoral Curatorial and Teaching Fellow at Marquette University.

Select exhibitions and publications:

The Art of Disability Justice Now, community curated project with UMN, AmplifyMN, and MNHS (2024)

INDISPOSABLE, Ford Foundation Gallery (2020 – 2022)

Introduction to Crip Materiality (2022)

Crip Curation as Care: A Manifesto (2022)

RE/FORMATIONS: Disability, Women, and Sculpture, Davidson College (2009)

C.V.