IDSVA student Nicole M. Crawford named Executive Director of the Barry Art Museum
October 8, 2026
IDSVA PhD Candidate, Nicole M. Crawford has been appointed Executive Director of Old Dominion University's Barry Art Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. She arrives as the museum gets ready to open its new Waitzer Wing in early 2027, an expansion that will double its gallery space.
Nicole comes to the Barry from the University of Wyoming Art Museum, where she had been Director and Chief Curator since 2020. Before that, she spent more than a decade there as Curator of Collections and later Assistant Director and Chief Curator. At IDSVA, her research looks at museum ethics, decolonization, and the repatriation of cultural artifacts. This includes her 2025 CAA presentation, "Reimagining Ethnographic Objects: Moving Beyond Repatriation in Decolonizing Museums."
For Nicole, the PhD hasn't pulled her away from museum leadership. It has transformed how she views it:
"IDSVA has fundamentally changed how I think about museums, curatorial practice, and institutional leadership. Rather than thinking of museums primarily as institutions that collect, preserve, and interpret, I've come to understand them as dynamic spaces where meaning is continually created and reconsidered… As I take on the directorship of the Barry Art Museum, I'm bringing an approach to leadership that is grounded not only in museum practice but also in critical philosophical inquiry. IDSVA has given me the intellectual framework to think beyond what museums have traditionally been and imagine what they can become."
When Nicole first considered IDSVA, she wasn't sure she could do a PhD while holding a demanding full-time museum job. What she found was that the two fed each other:
"The philosophical questions I encounter through IDSVA are the very questions that I believe the museum field needs to be asking. My professional experience informs my research, and my research continually challenges and enriches my professional practice. The low-residency model made it possible to pursue both without sacrificing either… For anyone considering IDSVA while already established in their career, I would say that you don't have to choose between intellectual growth and professional advancement."
Congratulations, Nicole!