Andrea Degener
Contact
- Department
- Library
- Name
- Andrea Degener
- Pronouns
- she/her/hers
- Job Title
- Curator for the Dowd Illustration Research Archive
- Email Address
- [email protected]
- Phone Number
- (314) 935-9382
Andrea Degener has been the Curator of the Dowd Illustration Research Archive (DIRA) at the WashU Libraries since 2024. Some of her favorite activities include giving DIRA tours to show the archive’s range. The breadth of materials, from original artwork to periodicals, comics, and toys, never ceases to spark interesting conversations. Andrea also enjoys leading instruction sessions on a range of topics drawn from the collections: fashion history, storyboards, process materials for children’s books, figure drawing, and even propaganda.
Other activities include outreach to the broader community, including exhibition talks and symposiums. Andrea has curated several exhibitions as curator and also enjoys writing or editing articles about the DIRA collections. She also creates research guides that help users navigate the collections and other resources.
As curator of DIRA, Andrea works closely with the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Illustration and Visual Culture program, which involves teaching, supervising fellowship positions, attending programmatic activities, and helping students work through their reference quandaries.
Andrea earned her MFA in art from WashU in 2011 and her library degree from the University of Missouri in 2016. Her professional research interests include visual culture as a form of scholarship, which often involves close examination of everyday materials and their impact on popular and consumer culture. Before becoming curator, Andrea served as the Visual Materials Processing Archivist at WashU Libraries.