Petra Slinkard is the Nancy B. Putnam Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM). Petra joined PEM in 2018, following her role as Curator of Costume at the Chicago History Museum (CHM), where she worked with a collection of more than 50,000 examples of fashion and textiles. Petra conceived and curated the exhibitions Chicago Styled: Fashioning The Magnificent Mile® and Making Mainbocher | The First American Couturier, for which she authored catalogues of the same titles. Prior to CHM she worked at Newfields (Indianapolis Museum of Art), where she helped expand the museum’s fashion exhibition offerings and collection, as well as key public programs and its Fashion Arts Society.

At PEM, Slinkard’s focus is to foster the growth and innovative, inclusive spirit of the museum’s celebrated fashion initiative and to develop a vibrant array of exhibitions, installations, and programming that celebrate the global impact and reach of fashion. She aims to strategically enhance the museum’s collection of fashion, costumes and textiles from around the world — spanning the 17th-century through today, and work with the museum’s new Fashion Visiting Committee. Follow @pslinks on Instagram and @pslinksp on Twitter.

Article Citations:

MLA: Healy, Marley. “An Interview with Petra Slinkard: Nancy B. Putnam Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.” Fashion Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2020, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.38055/FS020203.

APA: Healy, M. (2019). An interview with Petra Slinkard: Nancy B. Putnam Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Fashion Studies, 2(2), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.38055/FS020203.

Chicago: Healy, Marley. “An Interview with Petra Slinkard: Nancy B. Putnam Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.” Fashion Studies 2, no. 2 (2019): 1-16. https://doi.org/10.38055/FS020203.