Enfilade

Now available online from Winterthur:

Reframing, Refocusing, Reimagining Disability

Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library Collections

We are very excited to announce a new digital exhibit. Reframing, Refocusing, Reimagining Disability engages with select artifacts from the Winterthur Museum & Library collections created by disabled makers, for disabled users, or about disabled people.

Page from The Invited Alphabet, or Address of A to B: Containing His Friendly Proposal for the Amusement and Instruction of Good Children (London: 1809 / Winterthur Library, PZ6 R7in).

In three thematic sections, the exhibit shares stories about caretaking, aging, and disability education with artifacts that date from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that were used or made in North America. From Shaker walkers to silver mugs and eyeglasses, disability stories are everywhere in Winterthur’s collection and beyond. Co-curated by graduate students enrolled in a University of Delaware Art History seminar, along with collaborators within and beyond Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, this digital exhibit prioritizes access and inclusion through visual description, audio recordings, and alt-text. The student co-curators hope Reframing, Refocusing, Reimagining Disability will foster conversations about how access, inclusion, and disability histories are fundamental to the study of art history, and will enable artworks and objects at Winterthur Museum & Library to testify to past disabled persons’ experiences, connections, and communities. We invite you to visit, respond to, teach with, and share the exhibit widely.

This exhibition was co-curated and co-authored by graduate students enrolled in the “Disability and American Art Histories” seminar in the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware during the 2025 fall semester. Led by Dr. Jennifer Van Horn, and undertaken in partnership with Winterthur Museum & Library, graduate curators include: Phoebe Caswell, Gabrielle Clement, Sydney Collins, Sandra James, Cameron ‘Joey’ Koo, Bella Lam, Sheng Ren, Julia Rinaudo, Lauren Teresi, and Madeleine Ward-Schultz.

This digital exhibit was made possible thanks to the generous participation of our Advisory Council, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center at the University of Delaware, the Department of Art History, and Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.