Kathryn Hill joins the museum staff

The Georgia Museum of Art welcomes Kathryn Hill to its staff as the new curatorial assistant in contemporary art. Hill comes to Georgia from Syracuse, New York, where she received her master’s degree in art history and museum studies and worked as a collections assistant and curatorial intern for the Syracuse University Art Museum. She is no stranger to Georgia, however, as she previously worked at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta as a Windgate intern. Hill also has family nearby  in South Carolina, which allowed her to visit the Savannah River growing up.

Hill always thought she would be an artist. In pursuit of that goal, she got bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and business administration from Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, New York. She developed a deep appreciation for art history during her junior year of college when she studied abroad at Oxford University. Hill’s love of art history led her to pivot to museum studies for graduate school. She traces her initial love for art museums back to the opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in her hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas, when she was in high school. Through Crystal Bridges, Hill saw how an art museum can affect and interact with the community it belongs to, a concept that has become important to her own work within museums.

Hill cherishes the ability of art museums to create a sense of community, as they have done for her. “Art museums can be a place to converge and find grounding in that [convergence] through the accessibility of art and community,” she said. Additionally, part of the function of an academic museum like the Georgia Museum of Art is to “develop academic scholarship that challenges things that are set in place.” As part of such an institution, Hill hopes always to work with community in mind, which she believes is a focus of the Georgia Museum of Art and part of the reason she is excited to work there. 

Hill is interested in the interaction between artist and viewer she sees in contemporary art. Specifically, she’s excited by artists beginning to give over control, whether that be through allowing visitors an inside look at how their art is created, like artist Heather Day does, or creating movable ceramics, like artist Cecil Kemperink does. Hill believes these ways of interacting with art allow for a new perspective into both the final product and the process, which gives art historians a new way of analyzing the art.

Outside of work, Hill can be found baking and cooking or enjoying the outdoors through hiking or kayaking. She connects both of these interests to her love of travel, as she finds food to be a key part in how family and communities connect, and she likes exploring landscapes in different regions.

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