PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The Board of Directors of The Fabric Workshop and Museum has announced the retirement of Executive Director Susan L. Talbott, effective September 30, 2019, after nearly four years of service. During this time, Talbott will continue to oversee the operations and programming of FWM while assisting the Board of Directors in its search and eventual transition to a new Executive Director.

Talbott initially assumed the role of Interim Executive Director in January 2016, just one month after her retirement from a seven-year-long tenure at the helm of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT. She joined FWM after the death of its founder and friend of Talbott, Marion “Kippy” Boulton Stroud in August 2015. Upon arrival, Talbott immediately began instituting organizational and physical innovations to FWM and was quickly named Executive Director.

According to FWM Board President Maja Paumgarten Parker, “FWM is unique among the institutional landscape, integrating a workshop and artist residency program with an exhibition program and collection. Susan took on her leadership role at FWM with care and verve; her professionalism and high degree of experience and depth of knowledge in contemporary art and museum management were indispensable as she guided FWM to a place of greater strength and recognition.”

The nine exhibitions Talbott oversaw under her directorship received a marked increase in attendance and national critical acclaim for FWM. Of these, she curated six including Process and Practice, FWM’s 40th anniversary exhibition for which she also edited the catalogue and contributed an essay. Ursula Von Rydingsvard: The Contour of Feeling, guest curated by Mark Rosenthal, is currently on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., and touring plans for other recent exhibitions are currently in development. Among the more recent positive changes was the appointment of Karen Patterson as FWM’s first-ever titled curator, who joined FWM from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI, in March 2019. Ms. Patterson will relocate to Philadelphia to assume her new curatorial post in early July.

Prior to her Directorship at The Fabric Workshop and Museum and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Talbott was Director of Smithsonian Arts at the Smithsonian Institution. Prior to that, she was Director and CEO of the Des Moines Art Center, Executive Director of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, Director of the Visual Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts, and Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s branch museums at Equitable Center and Philip Morris in New York.

Today's issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer also includes an article by Stephan Salisbury about the announcement and highlights from Talbott's tenure as Executive Director.