Julia Dolan

Julia Dolan, Ph.D. is Interim Chief Curator and the Minor White Senior Curator of Photography at the Portland Art Museum. She has curated, co-curated, or hosted more than 45 photography exhibitions since joining the Museum in 2010. She oversees a team of seven curators, as well as the research of and acquisitions for the permanent collection, which currently numbers over 10,000 photographs. She is a member of the Museum’s Equity Team, and is a co-founder of the FOCUS group, a North American network of emerging photography curators, historians, and nonprofit professionals. Dr. Dolan’s exhibitions at PAM 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). She is currently developing an exhibition featuring Frank Matsura's early twentieth century photographic portraits made in northern Washington, as well as a multimedia study of contemporary artists' use of glitter, sequins, and crystals to symbolize joy, transcendance, and belonging.  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), 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 earned 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.