Ann Marguerite Tartsinis Named PMA’s New Curator of Costume and Textiles

Ann Marguerite Tartsinis has been named the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Curator and Head of Costume and Textiles, stepping into a role reshaped by profound loss. She begins September 21, 2026, leading a department the museum describes as home to one of the most significant costume and textile collections in the United States — spanning cultures, geographies, materials, and historical periods.

Following a 40-Year Legacy

Tartsinis’s appointment arrives at a genuinely poignant moment. Her predecessor, Dilys E. Blum, led the department for nearly four decades after joining the museum in 1987, retiring in June 2025 and passing away that December at age unspecified in the museum’s own announcement. Trained as a textile conservator at the University of Manchester and London’s Courtauld Institute, Blum built the collection into a globally respected program spanning Renaissance velvets, contemporary fashion, Bengali kantha quilts, Asian textiles, and African American quiltmaking — and was regarded as the world’s leading authority on Elsa Schiaparelli.

Over her tenure, Blum curated more than forty exhibitions that reshaped how museums treat fashion and textiles — as art, as identity, as social history. Landmark shows included Best Dressed: 250 Years of Style (1997), Shocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli (2003), Roberto Capucci: Art into Fashion (2011), Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love (2014), and most recently Boom: Art and Design in the 1940s (2025).

Her book on Patrick Kelly received an honorable mention for the Costume Society of America’s Millia Davenport Publication Award in 2023. “Dilys Blum leaves a remarkable legacy,” said Daniel Weiss, the museum’s George D. Widener Director and CEO, following her passing. “Through decades of scholarship and curatorial rigor, she transformed this museum’s Costume and Textiles department into a program respected around the world.”

Ann Marguerite Tartsinis’s Own Path to Philadelphia

Ann Marguerite Tartsinis brings a curatorial and scholarly practice grounded in fashion and textile history, material culture, craft, and modern and contemporary art. She currently serves as Assistant Curator of Architecture & Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, leading research and curation on a major exhibition opening in spring 2027 and contributing to Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture. Previously she was an Associate Curator at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery, working on exhibitions and publications including An American Style: Global Sources for New York Textile and Fashion Design, 1915–1928 (2013), Fashioning the Body: An Intimate History of the Silhouette (2015), Carrying Coca: 1,500 Years of Andean Chuspas (2014), and Knoll Textiles: 1945-2010 (2011).

Ann Marguerite Tartsinis’s scholarship includes the recent book Mondrian’s Dress: Yves Saint Laurent, Piet Mondrian, and Pop Art, co-authored with Nancy J. Troy, and “Fashion Studies: The State of the Field,” a special issue co-edited with Sarah Scaturro for Toronto Metropolitan University’s journal Fashion Studies. She has held teaching appointments at the California College of the Arts, University of San Francisco, and San Francisco State University, and is currently completing a PhD in Art History at Stanford University, holding an MA in Design History from the Bard Graduate Center.

“Ann is an exceptional curator whose scholarship, vision, and leadership will bring new energy to one of the museum’s most important collections,” said Weiss. “She understands the power of costume and textiles to illuminate histories of culture, identity, creativity, and exchange.” Tartsinis herself was direct about the weight of the moment: “I step into a role that was shaped through the pioneering work of former Senior Curator Dilys Blum, whose 40-year career transformed the collection and the field. I am deeply honored to advance her legacy of intellectual integrity and curatorial excellence, while guiding the department into its next phase.”

Ann Marguerite Tartsinis was selected from an international pool of applicants through a search led by Judith Pineiro Consulting, and will join the curatorial division overseen by Jessica Smith, the Pappas-Sarbanes Chief Curator. “I look forward to partnering with colleagues across the museum and engaging with communities throughout Philadelphia,” Tartsinis said, “to uncover new perspectives on the collection, foster unexpected connections across disciplines and audiences, and ensure that these remarkable objects continue to inspire curiosity, creativity, and critical inquiry.”

Tartsinis steps into the role at a genuine inflection point — not just succeeding a 40-year tenure, but inheriting a collection she’s already signaled she wants to open up to new disciplines and new audiences. What she chooses to program first will say a lot about where PMA’s costume and textiles department heads next, and it’s worth watching. More information is available at philamuseum.org.