THE Jacquie Dorrance CURATOR of Fashion design at Phoenix Art Museum

Helen Jean first joined the Museum in 2007 as a curatorial assistant for Dennita Sewell, Curator Emerita, who previously led the fashion design program at the Museum for nearly 20 years. As the Museum’s curatorial assistant for fashion design from 2007–12, Jean assisted in the management of the Museum’s fashion design collection, which now includes more than 8,000 objects. She also researched new acquisitions and assisted with the development and installation of dozens of fashion design exhibitions. As an educator, she has presented lectures, gallery talks, object discussions, and demonstrations on various topics, including the history of French and Italian fashion, Slavic embroidery, mathematics in fashion design, the depiction of Western clothing in 19th-century Japanese woodblock prints, and the history of the ostrich-feather industry in Arizona and its impact on modern fashion.

Jean, who brings more than a decade of experience as a fashion scholar and educator, recently curated the Museum’s recent fashion design exhibition, MOVE: The Modern Cut of Geoffrey Beene. Previously, Jean served as a fashion design instructor with the Art Institute of Phoenix, and most recently, she was a college representative at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles. She earned a BFA in Costume Design at Stephens College and an MFA in Fashion Design at the University of Nebraska.