Ashley Williams

Ashley specializes in the art and material culture of the United States and contested Indigenous lands. Her dissertation investigates unfree artistic labor and U.S. settler colonialism from 1850 to 1930, charting connections between conditions of enslaved, imprisoned, and coercive making. From 2018 to 2019, Ashley was the John Wilmerding Intern in American Art at the National Gallery of Art. She has also assisted with projects at the Wallach Art Gallery, the Bard Graduate Center Gallery, Historic Deerfield, the Newport Restoration Foundation, and the Blanton Museum of Art. She holds a BA from Agnes Scott College and an MA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her recent publication on sculpture and eugenics can be found in the Routledge Companion to Art and Disability (2022). Ashley's research has been supported by the Decorative Arts Trust, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Texas State Historical Association, the University of North Texas Portal to Texas History, the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, and others. She is the 2023-2024 William H. Truettner Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.