Juilee Decker
Professor
Juilee Decker
Professor
Education
BA, Wittenberg University; MA, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign; Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University
Bio
Dr. Juilee Decker (she/her) is a faculty member in the Department of History and Director of the Museum Studies program in the College of Liberal Arts.
Trained as an art historian, Dr. Decker's research and scholarship are at the intersection of museum studies, public history, and public art. She is an author, scholar, facilitator, and collaborator in the academy as well as in cultural institutions and communities. Since 2008, she has served as editor of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, a peer-reviewed journal published by SAGE. In 2015, she edited the four-volume series Innovative Approaches for Museums which brought together research and practices in the areas of engagement, access, technology, collections care and stewardship, as well as fundraising and strategic planning. In 2017, she revised Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums, a cornerstone publication in museum studies. Her 4th edition of the book is forthcoming in 2023. Her edited volume Fallen Monuments, Contested Memorials is due out from Routledge in 2022.
Beyond the work described above, Dr. Decker's research excavates histories and functions of museums and memorials as part of the process of understanding and critiquing constructions of knowledge and public memory in the U.S. Her monograph Enid Yandell: Kentucky's Pioneer Sculptor was published by the University Press of Kentucky in 2019. She is currently working on two projects related to monuments, memorials, and memory—which is also an area of her teaching (HIST 322, offered in the spring).
Dr. Decker has curated/co-curated numerous exhibitions focusing on art, material culture, and public history and has served as a consultant to public art projects and programs in the U.S. The exhibition Crafting Democracy: Fiber Arts & Activism (co-curated with Hinda Mandell) debuted in Rochester in June 2019 and traveled to venues in New York, Ohio, and Virginia through 2020.
Dr. Decker has served on the Board of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House and is a juror for the Education Committee of the American Alliance of Museums. She earned her Ph.D. in 2003 from the joint program in Art History and Museum Studies at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Prior to joining the faculty of RIT in 2014, Dr. Decker taught at Georgetown College.
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In the News
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October 7, 2021
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RIT volunteers build an exhibition about migrant deaths along the US-Mexico border
RIT volunteers are building an exhibition called Hostile Terrain 94, which will open to the public on campus later this fall. The RIT exhibition is part of a global pop-up exhibition that will take place in around 150 cities nationally and internationally in 2021-22 to highlight the crisis along the US-Mexico border.
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October 4, 2021
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RIT Providing Discoverability and Accessibility of Historical Documents to Museums and Libraries
The Museum Association of New York features imaging science and museum studies students for developing an affordable imaging system to help museums and libraries preserve and expand access to their collections department.
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May 5, 2021
![A student sits in a red chair in front of a brick building.]()
Museum studies graduate will attend top-ranked master’s program for archives and preservation
Katie Keegan has always been a fan of history. As a child growing up in Ithaca, N.Y., Keegan would ask her parents to plan family vacations to museums or historical sites, not Disneyworld or the beach. So when it was time for Keegan to decide on a college major, her parents suggested museum studies.
