“Material Culture” refers to both the physical traces of human experience and the scholarly approaches employed to study those physical traces. It encompasses material evidence of the past–from deep history to the past that has so recently passed it is nearly the present. These may be things that humans have found, adapted, created, or shaped for their use. As an interdisciplinary set of methods, students study the material world through courses in anthropology, art, art history, design studies, history, landscape architecture, literature, and many more departments.
The Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture supports the study of material culture through our curricular collaborations, research projects, exhibitions, and programs.
Material Culture Workshop
Throughout the academic year, the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture hosts a monthly workshop to promote an interdisciplinary dialogue around the study of material culture on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. This platform, led by Professor Yuhang Li, Faculty Director for Material Culture, brings together scholars to share their current research on material culture. The workshop is open to methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of material culture across disciplines, geographical areas, and chronological periods. We welcome faculty, curators, researchers, and students who are committed to the study of material culture. Each session focuses on specific themes and involves presentations and discussions but can also include museum object viewing sessions and studio visits.
Would you like to participate? Connect and let us know.
- October 15, 2025 – Danielle Burke, PhD Candidate, Design Studies, School of Human Ecology
Title: “Assembled Principally Through Correspondence: Aesthetic Ecologies in the Handicraft Movement, 1938-1947” - November 19, 2025 – Katie Juneau, PhD Student, Department of Art History
Title: “The Ambiguous Fairyland of Reality and Unreality in John Anster Fitzgerald’s The Intruder” - December 17, 2025 – Chi Lynn Lin, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Art History
Title: “Surfacing Ritual Spaces through Textile in the Qing Court” - February 18, 2026 – Anna Bierbrauer, Assistant professor, Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture.
Title: TBD - March 18, 2026 – James Bielo, Department of Religious Studies, Northwestern University
Title: “Second Hand Scared” collaboration with Religious Studies Program at UW-Madison - April 15, 2026 – Katherine Alcauskas, Chief Curator, Chazen Museum of Art
Title: TBD
- September 18, 2024 – Ann Smart Martin, Professor Emerita, Department of Art History
Title: “Jokes Came in with Candles: The Im/Material Culture of Domestic Lighting” - October 16, 2024 – Yongxin Kong, PhD Candidate, the Department of Art History, the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Visiting scholar (2023-24), Center for Design and Material Culture
Title: “So Much Longing in A Flower: Victorian Hair Flower-making, Botanical Knowledge and Floriography” - November 13, 2024 – Addison Nace, PhD Candidate, Design Studies Department
Title: “Weaving the Archive: Maya Textiles Heritage Knowledge and Histories” - February 19, 2025 – Dr. Elizabeth Athens, Solmsen Fellow, IRH, UW–Madison, 2024-2025, Assistant Professor, Art + Art History, University of Connecticut
Title: “The Early Modern Anatomist as Master Artisan” - March 19, 2025 – Svea Larson, PhD Candiate, Scandinavian Studies, Department of German, Nordic, and Slovic+
Title: “‘I followed my cookbook’s instructions and my own taste.’ Recipe Collections and Practice-Based Education in Olga Hansson’s Culinary Vocational Training, Sweden circa 1910-1930” - April 17, 2025 – Maeve Hogan, PhD Candidate, Design Studies Department
Title: “Between Utility and Art: Recovering Fiber-Based Craft Histories of the 1950s and 1960s”
- September 18, 2023 – Anna Andrzejewski, Professor, The Department of Art History
Title: “A Tropical Paradise?: Living Inside (and Outside) of South Florida’s Suburban Leisure Landscape” - October 16, 2023 – Tania Kolarik, PhD Candidate, The Department of Art History
Title: “Textility: A New Textile Centric Art Historical Methodology” - October 16, 2023 – Dehlia Mitchell-Gray, PhD Student, The Department of Art History
Title: “Cumbrous and Clumsy, Sharp and Bright: The Making, Use, and Import of Needles in Nineteenth Century China” - November 20, 2023 – Chi-Lynn Lin, PhD Student, The Department of Art History
Title: “The Invention and Transformation of Chinese Carpets in the Nineteenth Century” - November 20, 2023 – Liesl Chatman, Folk Artist, North Folk School in Minnesota, the 2023 Folk Artist-in-Residence at the Art Department and Department of German, Nordic, and Slovic+
Title: “Stories in Wood” - February 19, 2024 – Dr. Sophie Pitman, Pleasant Rowland Textile Specialist and Research Director for the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection
Title: “Research on display: curatorial strategies in Remaking the Renaissance“ - February 19, 2024 – Claire Kilgore, PhD Candidate, The Department of Art History
Title: “Is That a Plaid, Check, or Tartan? Cataloguing a Visually Ubiquitous Medieval Textile”
- March 18, 2024 – Travis Olson, PhD Candidate, Department of Art History
Title: “‘Making It’ on the Edge of the West: The Speculative Landscape of Southwestern North Dakota” - March 18, 2024 – Dr. Sarah Anne Carter, Executive Director, Center for Design and Material Culture; Associate Professor, Design Studies Department
Title: “Feeling like a Museum: Case Studies from the Milwaukee Public Museum” - April 15, 2024 – Dr. Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Collection Reinstallation Project Associate, Chazen Museum of Art, and Carolyn Herrera-Perez, Curator of Glass and Ceramic, Chazen Museum of Art
Title: “Centering Material Culture: Case Studies from the Chazen Museum of Art’s Collection”
Affiliated Program
The Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture collaborates with a number of material culture programs offered through the Design Studies Department in the School of Human Ecology through course engagements, exhibitions in our galleries, research visits to the collection, and more. We also offer a number of student employment and fellowship opportunities available to all UW–Madison students.
Certificate in Material Culture
The Undergraduate Certificate in Material Culture allows UW–Madison students to explore ways of making sense of the material world.
Material Culture Courses
Material Culture refers to an interdisciplinary set of methods and may be found in departments across campus.
History of Material Culture at UW
The University of Wisconsin–Madison has a long history of supporting material culture pedagogy and research under the guidance of Dr. Ann Smart Martin, Stanley and Polly Stone (Chipstone) Professor Emeritus of American Decorative Arts and Material Culture. Professor Martin is the founding director of the UW–Material Culture Program and Material Culture Faculty Group, first located in the Department of Art History and now within the School of Human Ecology. The Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture celebrated Prof. Martin’s contributions to material culture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the exhibition Questioning Things: A Quarter Century of Material Culture Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.