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Julia Dolan, Ph.D.

The Minor White Curator of Photography

she/her/hers

Julia Dolan has curated, co-curated, or hosted over 40 photography exhibitions since joining the Portland Art Museum in 2010. She also oversees research of and acquisitions for the permanent collection, which currently holds more than 10,000 photographs. She is a member of the Museum’s Equity Team, and was a co-founder of the FOCUS group, a North American network of emerging photography curators, historians, and nonprofit professionals.

Dr. Dolan’s exhibitions at the Museum include Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… (with Sara Krajewski, 2019-20), Toughened to Wind and Sun: Women Photographing the Landscape (2019-20), In the Beginning: Minor White’s Oregon Photographs (2017-2018), Representing: Vernacular Photographs of, by, and for African Americans (2017), Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy: Zig Jackson, Wendy Red Star, Will Wilson (with Dr. Deana Dartt, 2016), and Blue Sky: The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts at 40 (2014). She has published essays in multiple publications including Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… (2018), Sun, Shadows, Stone: The Photography of Terry Toedtemeier (2018), Geolocation: Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman (2015), Blue Sky: The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts at 40 (2014), and The Question of Hope: Robert Adams in Western Oregon (2013).

Dr. Dolan received a B.F.A. in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art, an M.A. in Art History from the Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. in Art History from Boston University. She has worked with the photography collections at institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University.

Julia Dolan