Laurel Bradley has been Director of Exhibitions and Curator of the College Art Collection at Carleton since fall of 1996. Best part of the job? Talking to new people “out of the blue” on the search for art and ideas, and making things happen in the arts. Since coming to Carleton, Bradley has orchestrated numerous international exhibitions “on a shoestring,” including Claiming Title: Australian Aboriginal Artists and the Land; Transformations: Chinese Artists Address Change in China; Kettles: American Artists and Japanese Artistry; and World Ceramics: Transforming Womens’ Traditions. The fall 2009 exhibition Modernizing Melodrama, co-curated with Cinema and Media Studies professor Carol Donelan, embodies a new emphasis on connecting the exhibition program with the curriculum.

Laurel Bradley teaches seminars in curatorial practice and oversees the college art collection. She has played a leadership role in Carleton’s Visuality initiative, which has recently been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation under a program titled “Visualizing the Liberal Arts.” Ms. Bradley spent eight years teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism, and was the founding director of Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her Ph.D is from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, with a Victorian art dissertation topic.

Since 2000, Wendy Nordquist has been providing support to the Director and the Registrar and assisting with any and all Museum (and previously Art Gallery) activity: exhibition installation & de-installation, working with student Gallery Guards, and other various behind-the-scenes tasks.

In her off-campus life, Wendy does custom-sewing and alterations work, and hosts a weekly music show, Fine Tune, on KYMN radio. Her husband Mike Moyer and son Stewart Moyer work at their own business, Mike's Bikes of Northfield.