Curator Biography
My name is Abigail Paternina and I am the curator of Judith and the Head of Holofernes. I am a junior at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff studying Art History with a double minor in Museum Studies and Anthropology. I was introduced to the subject of Judith and Holofernes my sophomore year in my Western Art since 1400 class. The painting under discussion was Artemisia Gentileschi's seventeenth-century Judith Slaying Holofernes in which my professor, Dr. Tara Kohn, made sure to highlight the significance of Gentileschi's trial to her painting. From that point on I became fascinated with Judith and her story with Holofernes, I had never seen such a raw depiction of female revenge—female rage—prior to then, and embarked on creating this exhibit the following year.
Between then and now, I have had the privilege of working on a handful of formative art history projects such as designing a museum, writing museum labels, developing a nonprofit arts organization, etc. and have had the privilege of being an art history teacher's assistant to Dr. Zsuzsanna Gulacsi. Soon I will be interviewing with the Flagstaff Arts Council for an internship with them in the fall of my senior year, and plan on moving to New York once I graduate in the spring of 2021 in order to work with some of the greatest museums our country has to offer and become a museum curator.
Working on this exhibit has been a pleasure, and I am thrilled to be giving Judith's story a platform. Thank you again for taking the time to look through my exhibit, it has been a labor of love that I hope to perfect through my senior year and bring into my career as a museum professional.
-Abigail Paternina