Valerie Steele

Valerie Steele

Director & Chief Curator · Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology

Like many of us, I was always personally interested in fashion as a means of communication and masquerade, but it was in graduate school when a classmate of mine did a report on two scholarly articles about the Victorian corset that I suddenly had an epiphany, and I realized that fashion was a part of culture, and I could study fashion history.

IAN WARDROPPER

IAN WARDROPPER

Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director · The Frick Collection

I firmly believe that the arts should be a part of everybody's education. It's not just learning the history of art, but it's about opening up creativity as a means that can be useful to somebody throughout one's life.