The Denver Art Museum (DAM) today announced the appointment of Jill D’Alessandro as Director and Curator of the Avenir Institute of Textile Art and Fashion. D’Alessandro will officially join the museum staff in January 2023.

Prior to her appointment to the Denver Art Museum’s curatorial team, D’Alessandro served as curator-in-charge of costume and textile arts for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF). During her 21-year career at FAMSF, she worked with the institution’s extensive fiber collections, as well as its fashion holdings.

“The Denver Art Museum is delighted to welcome Jill to its team of collaborative curatorial leaders,” said Christoph Heinrich, the Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the DAM. “In recent years, the DAM has developed a strong program around its Textile Art and Fashion collections, including securing a $25 million endowment for the Institute of Textile Art and Fashion in 2019. Jill has the right mix of expertise in traditional textiles, fiber art and high-fashion presentations that I know will keep Colorado audiences excited for what is next.”

D’Alessandro holds a Master’s of Fine Arts from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and a Bachelor’s of Fine Art from Scripps College where her senior thesis focused on Diné/Navajo blankets. In addition to her career at FAMSF, she worked as a guest curator for the 2017-18 Rodarte exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Notable exhibitions spearheaded by D’Alessandro include Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy, currently on view at the FAMSF, celebrating the designs of Guo Pei, hailed as China’s first couturier. Featuring more than 80 looks from the past two decades, the exhibition highlights the designer’s most important collections from the runways of Beijing and Paris. D’Alessandro also served as co-curator for Contemporary Muslim Fashions (2018), which expanded Western canon and explored global fashion narratives. To Dye For: A World Saturated in Color (2010) was a cross-cultural examination of resist-dye techniques such as tie-dye and ikat, and showcased a diverse array of over 50 examples from FAMSF’s comprehensive collection of textiles from Africa, Asia and the America, which also served to underscore D’Alessandro’s broad knowledge of world textile traditions.

“Jill’s vision for the Institute, her deep knowledge of both textile art and fashion and her focus on creating dialogue and connections with communities greatly impressed the panel,” said Angelica Daneo, Chief Curator at the DAM. “Her experience in the field and nuanced understanding of past traditions and current trends will be fundamental as we continue to develop ambitious exhibitions and innovative programs for our audiences.”

D’Alessandro was the recipient of the Costume Society of America’s 2020 Richard Martin Exhibition Award, in recognition of excellence and innovation in the interpretation and presentation of costume as well as the Enhancing Understanding Award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations for her work on the Contemporary Muslim Fashions exhibition. She was the recipient of the prestigious J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Award in 1998, including a ten-month research grant to study traditional Korean papermaking techniques and their application in contemporary art.

Key publication credits in D’Alessandro’s name include 2022’s Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy, Yale University Press. D’Alessandro served as co-editor of Contemporary Muslim Fashions, and authored the lead essay for the 2018 catalogue. Additional publication highlights for D’Alessandro include Summer of Love: Art, Fashion and Rock & Roll, San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2017, which she co-authored with Colleen Terry and featured heressay “Stitching a New Paradigm: Dress Codes of the Counterculture.”  Her chapter, “With beauty all around me, I walk,” in Routledge’s Anthropology and Beauty: From Aesthetics to Creativity, edited by Stephanie Bunn (2018) shone a light on Indigenous textiles, as well as D’Alessandro’s expertise on Diné/Navajo weavings. She also authored Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave, 2011, an incredibly popular volume that saw three printings.