Maddie Blonquist, Brigham Young University Museum of Art’s new Curator of Religious Art

We feel everything she needed to know she learned as a writer for 15 Bytes (from 2018 to 2019), but there’s a chance Brigham Young University Museum of Art’s new Curator of Religious Art picked up a thing or two in other places.

Like in Heather Belnap’s Women in Art class, at Brigham Young University, where Maddie Blonquist studied from 2012 to 2018. A pivotal moment occurred while studying Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” “It was the first time I realized one could appreciate the significance of an artwork while still holding it—and the artist—accountable for perpetuating problematic ideologies, attitudes, and behaviors. It was a masterclass in ethical scholarship.”

She has a lot of positive things to say about her time at BYU. She began as a Piano Performance major, studying with Scott Holden, but says that after participating one summer in the Pembroke-King’s Programme at Cambridge University, she decided she wanted to do more with visual art and curation. “[At BYU], I did all sorts of crazy projects that involved music, art, and literature and no one ever told me I couldn’t. I ended up declaring a second major in Interdisciplinary Humanities and minoring in Art History, and many professors bent over backwards to help me juggle my course requirements between departments.”

During her undergraduate program, she was a Curatorial Fellow at the BYU Museum of Art, working with curator Ashlee Whitaker. While there, she explored the intersection of religion and the body, curating an exhibition on the sonic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This work inspired her to co-found BYU’s interfaith club, fostering dialogue between faiths. “I became really interested in the potential of art in cultivating religious literacy and holy envy for other faith traditions,” she says.

That work informed her decision to attend Yale Divinity School, where she deepened her exploration, integrating religious studies and art history while curating exhibitions and honing her skills as a scholar and curator. While studying visual controversies and religious censorship at Yale, she experienced a transformative shift, shaped by mentors like Jenny Raab, Jacqueline Jung, Sally Promey, and Vasileios Marinis. Initially frustrated and angered by the groups she critiqued, she learned “how you can maintain a sense of diplomacy and fairness in your critiques while remaining firm in your position and calls for change.”

The additions to her CV from her time at Yale were not insubstantial. She received a Master of Arts in Religion with an emphasis in Visual Art and Material Culture, completed the program requirements for the Institute of Sacred Music, received a certificate in Public Humanities with a focus on Museums and Collections, and worked at the Yale University Art Gallery. At the latter she curated a show of Utah artist Beth Krensky’s work for the Institute of Sacred Music (in 2019 Blonquist wrote on Krensky for our publication, Utah’s 15, Vol. II). “[The program at Yale] let me do everything I wanted, gave me regular access to some of the best collections in the country, and pushed me as a scholar, curator, and writer.”

On her CV, or at least on her LinkedIn page, find a two-year detour into sales. Before attending Yale, she married her partner, Nicholas Shrum, who also pursued graduate studies at Yale. When Shrum was accepted into the University of Virginia’s Religious Studies PhD program, the couple moved to Charlottesville. Blonquist continued to find some work in her field remotely, but living in a “small town with talented people” was unable to find full-time work. A part-time job at Anthropologie turned into a full-time management position “that helped pay the bills and gave me a fabulous wardrobe.” It also provided important skills for her current work—they may go by other names, but museum work involves a lot of sales and customer service—and life lessons. “I think everyone should do a stint in retail or food service, just so we remember to treat everyone like a person and challenge the ways we think about high- or low-brow work.”

In July, Blonquist began her role as Curator of Religious Art at Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art, the role formerly held by Whitaker and which Blonquist always considered a “dream job.” When it became available, she applied, even if the timing wasn’t perfect, since Shrum is still completing his PhD.  “Even though we are currently long distance, Nicholas and I have come to really love this ‘problem’; we knew who we married, and our temporary separation is the result of two ambitious people who want to support each other—which sometimes means you can’t always be together.”

For Blonquist, it’s a homecoming. She grew up in nearby Springville, where her interest in art and art history began at The Springville Museum of Art. “I always knew I’d want to be in a position to bring everything I’d worked hard to learn and develop elsewhere back home to our arts community here.” She’s encouraged by what is available in Utah. She recently participated in Jann Haworth’s ongoing Work in Progress mural project, contributing a stencil of Katie Piper, an English writer, activist, and model who who survived an acid attack by an ex-boyfriend and gave up her anonymity to raise awareness about burn victims. And she’s enthusiastic about what art institutions in Utah are doing, citing In Memory at UMOCA and Blue Grass, Green Skies at the UMFA. “Both were incredibly thoughtful and brought significant artists to our state audiences. Both of these organizations are doing rigorous and cutting-edge work.”

As the Curator of Religious Art at BYU, Maddie Blonquist holds a unique position that bridges Art History and Religious Studies for a devotional audience. While Christian art remains central due to the university’s ties to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she aims to expand interfaith dialogue through exhibitions that balance familiarity with discovery. She was responsible for bringing Joshua Meyer’s “Eight Approaches” (see here) to the museum. She hopes to foster authentic community relationships while supporting students’ high-level academic engagement. “People have a lot of assumptions about what Utah is or isn’t—and there’s room for all of that—but I really do believe in the work that we do at the BYU Museum of Art and the role it plays in the broader artistic landscape here. I’ve been to some of the best museums all over the world, and I really can say that much of what we do here is world-class. I want to continue to be a part of what is already great and work to make it even better.”

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.