Biography
Robert Blandford is an Associate Professor and the Coordinator of the Arts Management Program in the Business and Entrepreneurship Department. He teaches in arts managment, with a focus on visual arts. Bob has over twenty-five years experience in senior management positions for cultural institutions including the Museum of the City of New York, the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Children's Museum of Manhattan. As a consultant he has worked with a variety of clients including the National Park Service, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City, and the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico in the development of exhibitions, strategic and interpretive plans, and educational programming. He continues to consult in the field.
Most recently, Bob served as Executive Editor of Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America, published in October 2018. Distributed by Yale University Press it serves as the companion volume to the Chicago History Museum exhibition Modern by Design.
Bob began his career at the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois after earning a BFA in art history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Instructional Areas
Exhibition Management, Curatorial Practice, Gallery Management, Museum Management, Business of Visual Arts
Creative Practice and Research Interests
Exhibition Design, History, and Theory; Museum Design and Professional Practice; Curatorial Practice; Cultural Heritage Management
Degrees
B.F.A., History of Art University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1977