Curators in Conversation: Repetition and Iteration in Printmaking

Michelle Donnelly is the Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection at PAFA. 

She is the co-curator of One After Another: Series and Studies (2026–27) and To Be Continued… (2026–27) and the curator of Proof Testing: The PrintLab Artist Residency at Brandywine Workshop and Archives (2026–27). She seeks to center the work of women artists and artists of color and is particularly interested in the politics of materiality, process, and site. Prior to joining PAFA, Michelle held curatorial positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yale Center for British Art, the Morgan Library & Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and Heckscher Museum of Art. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Grey Room, Woman’s Art Journal, The Public Review, and Pennsylvania History, as well as publications by the Getty Research Institute, Museum of Modern Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Yale School of Art. She earned a PhD in the History of Art from Yale University, an MA in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Art History with Honors from Vassar College.

Dr. Lea Stephenson is an art historian, who is currently the Kenneth R. Woodcock Curator of Historical American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 

She oversees PAFA’s collection from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century and serves as the co-curator of A Nation of Artists, a landmark exhibition and reinstallation that explores new ideas and interpretations of American art through the 18th century to the contemporary world.

Stephenson’s work has focused on nineteenth-century American art, particularly American artists traveling and working internationally. Her work has appeared in academic journals, edited volumes, and exhibition catalogs, where she explored topics including PAFA’s first 1807 exhibition, Aesthetic Movement interiors, and Gilded Age portrait miniatures. Prior to joining PAFA, Stephenson held curatorial positions and fellowships at Historic Deerfield, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Preservation Society of Newport County, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Clark Art Institute.

She recently completed her PhD in Art History at the University of Delaware in 2025, where her dissertation explored late nineteenth-century Egyptomania among American artists and collectors. Before her PhD, Stephenson completed her BA in Art History at Temple University and MA at the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art.