Museum of Art

Join us for a reception hosted by the Dean of Faculty to wish Dan well in his retirement, and take a moment to enjoy the current exhibitions—which include his two most recent curatorial projects—before they close!

Dan has led the museum since 2010, overseeing an impressive exhibition schedule while growing the collections, staff, and the museum’s capacity to fulfill its mission.  He will be retiring on December 31.

Dan is known for partnering with artists and scholars on projects that investigate a wide range of topics and that have shaped adventuresome international curatorial programs at several academic museums for over 25 years. Exhibitions he has curated or co-curated have travelled to over fifty institutions including Brown University, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Williams College. He has invited numerous noted guest curators to present compelling projects as part of the exhibition program, and has worked with artists ranging from emerging to some of the most influential of our time.  Dan has been a frequent guest lecturer/panelist at institutions including the Chicago Cultural Center, Wake Forest University, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and guest critic for the Herron School of Art, Stanford University, and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. 

Dan’s primary curatorial focus on contemporary art is evident from this selection of exhibitions he organized for the museum:

• Tale Spinning
• Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments (1993-2008)
• Fransje Killaars: Color at the Center
• How to Make the Universe Right: The Art of the Shaman in Vietnam and Southern China
• Back and Forth: The Collaborative Works of Dawn Clements and Marc Leuthold
• The View Out His Window (and in his mind’s eye): Photographs by Jeffery Becton
• PHANTOM PUNCH: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston
• Kate Gilmore: In Your Way
• Rona Pondick and Robert Feintuch: Heads, Hands, Feet; Sleeping, Holding, Dreaming, Dying
• Anthropocenic: Art About the Natural World in the Human Era
• Vanessa German: Miracles and Glory Abound
• Let’s Celebrate Ashley Bryan!
• And So Did Pleasure Take the Hand of Sorrow, and They Wandered Through the Land of Joy
• Exploding Native Inevitable: an exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art from the land we now call America

Dan is also an active artist, and exhibits his work extensively in the US and occasionally abroad. He has recently had solo exhibitions at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland (2019); Museum of Art, University of New Hampshire, Durham (2020); Herron Galleries, Herron School of Art + Design, Indianapolis (2020); and Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston (2021).  Learn more about his work at dan-mills.net