Susan Baley Receives $3,000 Grant Through the International Fine Print Dealers Association Foundation

Susan Baley, director of the Grinnell College Museum of Art, was rewarded a $3,000 grant from the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Foundations’ Curatorial Internship Program. The grant will partially fund a summer 2023 internship for a postbaccalaureate student who will create an exhibition of prints from the Grinnell College Museum of Art’s (GCMoA) collection. The exhibition will complement a fall 2023 exhibition by contemporary artist Stephen Appleby-Barr, who creates paintings and etchings referencing art history, literature, costume, and set design. The intern will be involved in all aspects of exhibition curation, including preparing prints for exhibition and researching and writing didactic materials. At the conclusion of the internship, the institution and the intern will write an impact statement for the IFPDA Foundation.

“I fell in love with museum work as an intern, and so I have a strong commitment to providing meaningful internship opportunities for Grinnell College students,” says Baley. “We appreciate IFPDA for providing a postbaccalaureate student the opportunity to build an exhibition from GCMoA’s impressive print collection.”

The IFPDA Foundation seeks to empower print curators to cultivate the next generation of scholars, curators, dealers, and specialists in the field of fine prints. IFPDA supports early career exposure in the arts by providing direct financial support to museums and other nonprofit institutions for educational programs, exhibitions, scholarly research, and museum-based curatorial internships. Every year, the IFDA Foundation provides funding on behalf of their Curatorial Internship Program to institutions that are able to provide their intern with object-based experience in the collection under the guidance of one or more experienced print specialists.

Susan Baley was named the Grinnell College Museum of Art director in January 2022. She served 17 years as a director of education at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum at the University of Oklahoma, one of the nation’s finest university art museums, with significant collections of American art, Native American art, and French Impressionism. Baley was also an executive director at the Swope Art Museum in Indiana and 108 Contemporary in Oklahoma, a nonprofit community arts center. She amassed over twenty-five years of experience in administrative leadership, board development, communications, curation, fostering community partnerships, and grant writing.