Biography
Hannah Wirta Kinney is an object-based educator and historian of art and material culture. As Curator of Academic Programs she collaborates with faculty members and partners across campus to make works of art central to liberal arts learning at Oberlin through teaching, programs, and exhibitions. In 2021, Kinney launched the Shared Art program, an initiative that uses a single work of art from AMAM’s collection to foster community among incoming students. Her recent exhibitions, co-curated with Alexandra Letvin, have reinterpreted canonical works of American art to highlight their role in reinforcing settler colonialism and suppressing Indigenous agency.
Kinney is a specialist in early modern sculpture and the Grand Ducal Medici court. Her research in this area has focused on material innovations in casting, particularly by Pietro Tacca and Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi, as well as notions of artistic ownership and authorship in the long 17th century.
