Doreen Schmid is an editor, curator and writer who produces cultural content for a range of organizations including museums, publishers, wineries and foundations. After an earlier career in wine education, strategic planning and cross-platform packaging of wine and art, Schmid developed a hybrid approach to institutional development and creative branding which has been utilized in her work as a founding team member of five start-ups: three cultural arts institutions, an international winery venture, and a traveling art exhibition service.
Schmid began as an editor with Henry Holt in New York, and has held positions including Senior Manager for Exhibition Content & Publications Development for the National Museum of Qatar, and International Marketing Director for Luce, a high-profile Italian joint venture between Robert Mondavi and Marchesi de' Frescobaldi.
Her books, publications and museum catalogue projects have won national acclaim, including top awards with the American Association of Museums and Annual New York Book Show competitions.
As an independent curator and writer, Schmid works closely with artists and art institutions in the development of interpretive materials, programs and exhibitions. She recently co-authored Oyster Culture, which is about the social and geographical influence of oysters and their endangered status in northern California’s Bay Area estuaries.
CURATOR, Selected Projects
See: Rich and Strange, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, 2013
Silver, developmental, Buck Institute, Novato, CA, 2011
Know the Rules, Then Break Them, di Rosa, Napa, CA, 2010
Innovation & Adaptation: Winery Architecture in the Napa Valley, SFO Airport Museum 2008/Napa Valley Museum, 2007
Frames of Reference, Center for Photographic Arts, Carmel, CA, 2004
Nobody Talks About It, Bolinas Museum, Bolinas, CA, 2004
EDITOR/WRITER, Selected Projects
From Bubbles to Boardrooms, edited, Michaela Rodeno, 2013
Überblick, developmental, Museum Voswinckelshof, Dinslaken, DE, 2013
Oyster Culture, co-authored (Cameron + Company, Petaluma, CA), 2011
Vit Lit, edited (Cameron + Company, Petaluma, CA), 2011
Kara Women Speak, developmental/editing, 2011
Silent Nests, essay (Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, DE), 2011
The Aral Sea, editing, 2009
Odyssey: Photographs by Linda Connor, edited (Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA), 2010
Work published in Gastronomica, Time Out, Quarterly Review of Wine, Los Angeles Times, Saveur, exposure, Touring & Tasting, Appellation
EDUCATION & PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA, MA, Visual Criticism, additional studies in Curatorial Practice
San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, MA, English
George Eastman House Photographic Preservation & Collections Management Program, Rochester, NY
Gawain Weaver, "The Care and Identification of Photographs" Certificate Workshop, San Anselmo, CA
Board Member: PhotoAlliance, San Francisco; previously Ansel Adams Center and O’Hanlon Center for the Arts
Selected Presentations: Di Rosa, Napa, CA, 2009/11/13; Department of History, University of Zimbabwe, 2007; “Milkmaids to Memsahibs,” Fourth Annual Conference on Colonialism: India and Ireland, National University of Ireland, Galway, 2007 and the University of South Carolina at Beaufort, 2006; “Delight and Disgust: Memento Mori in Contemporary Art,” 18th Annual AEGS Interdisciplinary Conference, University of Southern California, 2005.
Art Jury / Judging: Art reviewer Our World, West Marin Review, Eighteen Months, San Francisco, CA; Photo Fest Ireland
Teaching: Afghan Women’s Writing Project tutor; literacy program volunteer, Napa, CA; TA undergraduate art students at California College for the Arts; Sonoma County Beekeeper’s Association bee classes for K-8
CURRENT PROJECTS
Editing an art therapist’s book on the relationship between art making and healing.
From Milkmaid to Memsahib: A biographical, historical, critical theory, and creative narrative composite deconstructing 1930s-40s photographs of Anglo Irish colonial wives in India—a way of working with historical narratives informed by personal stories.
The Ooty Club: Digitizing and writing a biographical composite narrative about The Ooty Club’s Hunt Photographs collection, 600 images from 1850–1950 documenting the legacy of a bastion of India’s hill station colonial days.
Gnawing on my Bones: a rumination on the natural and cultural history of bones and my father’s diagnosis and death from bone disease.
Reclamation Road: An essay on great love found and lost.
The Architecture of Bees: An exhibition that explores how artists have used bees, their habitat and by-products in traditional and contemporary artwork to explore concepts of lights and dark, external and internal, community and solitude. Elevator pitch: sweetness and scariness: two things to which humans are greatly attracted.
Nicole Maxwell: An article on the New York society renegade and ethno-botanist pioneer
The Storybox Adventure: Collaborating with an award-winning educational, interactive media and gaming team on The Solutionaries—a three-part interactive eBook series that engages children’s imaginations in a treasure hunt to identify real-life “heroes” who are discover solutions to climate change, and to find new solutions on their own.
Sara Copia Sullam: A fictional reconstruction of the life of a 16th-17th century Jewish Venetian poet and popular salon host.
Afghanistan Women’s Writing Project: online volunteer tutoring for the organization that “works to nurture and support the voices of Afghan women, who traditionally have not had any outlet for sharing their powerful, often heart-breaking stories and their compelling voices.”
The Fireflies: A girls’ U.S. support writing network with girls in the Girl Child Network (GCN), the Zimbabwean network for sexually abused girls.
Sonoma County Beekeeper’s Association: Writing a manual and teaching about bees in local public schools, and creating/populating a page on bee art for the association’s website.