Rosenthal Kicks Off DCAL 2008 Season

Deborah Rosenthal, curator of the Miller Art Museum (MAM) in Sturgeon Bay, will speak at the first official meeting of 2008 of the Door County Art League (DCAL). The meeting will be held on Monday, April 28, from 7 – 9 pm at the Gibraltar Fire Department meeting room, 3496 County Road F, Fish Creek.

After approximately a half hour of socializing and catching up after the long winter, members will hear Rosenthal’s speech entitled “What Does a Curator Do, Anyway?” The public is also invited to hear her discuss finding exhibit opportunities at art centers and museums.

Rosenthal, who says she has known since she was about 14 that she wanted to be involved with art in some way as an adult, says, “I fell in love with drawing…I had always assumed everybody enjoyed making pictures and objects.”

In high school, Rosenthal was chosen as part of a group to attend an activity at the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. That experience opened her eyes to the wide range of museums and world art. Because she was fortunate to live in a Chicago suburb, she was able to spend many hours at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and a variety of other art venues.

Rosenthal attended Illinois Wesleyan University, graduating with a B.F.A. concentrated in printmaking and drawing. She lived in Vienna, Austria, her junior year in college where she studied art and art history. The access to history and to great European museums developed her interest in looking into that direction for a career.

Upon graduation, Rosenthal was accepted as an art history graduate student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which has a long-established museum studies program. While earning her M.A. degree, she acquired the basic skills to work with collections in museums and has done so for about twenty-five years.

The Door County Art League was organized in 1986 and incorporated in 1993 for the purpose of developing active community involvement in the field of creative arts. Membership is open to artists and all other persons interested in and supportive of the visual arts in Door County. For more information and to sign up for the newsletter, visit http://www.doorcountyartleague.org or contact Co-President Jeanne Whildin at 920.823.2532 or Vice-President JoAnne Rosenfeld at 920.559.7530.