about

Jo Reinert is a Wichita-based multidisciplinary creative and museum professional specializing in experiential curation, innovative engagement strategies, arts management, and collection stewardship. Reinert is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ulrich Museum of Art, where her current projects posit galleries as transformed environments through which to design the experience of space as a catalyst for connection and education. Her practice aims to give voice to historically underrepresented narratives and experiences, foster dialogue between audiences and contemporary art, and integrate emerging technology as a tool for engagement.

Reinert's current curatorial projects at the Ulrich Museum of Art are "Devan Shimoyama: Rituals" (January 23, 2025 - June 14, 2025), "Listening Devices: The Photographer and New Perspectives" (January 23, 2025 - July 12, 2025), and "Anne Samat: Avatars" (Opening January 2026). Select exhibitions include "[RE]POSE: Leisure Bodies and Empowered Postures" (Ulrich Museum of Art, July 29 - December 7, 2024), "Dream Machine: Fantasy, Surreality, and Play" (Ulrich Museum of Art, August 26 - December 7, 2024), "Fully Dimensional: Artists of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection," (Ulrich Museum of Art, January 25 - June 15, 2024), "Nebraska Rocks: A Mid-Century Music Scene" featuring the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame (Elkhorn Valley Museum, November 15, 2019 - February 15, 2020), which resulted in Nebraska's only permanent Music Hall of Fame exhibit; "Folk Art of Mexico: Selections from the Boeckman Collection of Mexican and Latin American Folk Art" (Elkhorn Valley Museum, December 4, 2018 - March 23, 2019), and "Dress Code: Frills, Fashion, and Function" (Elkhorn Valley Museum, November 16, 2018 - April 27, 2019). Reinert has contributed curatorial research and interpretive writing to a number of exhibitions, such as "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Tom Golden Collection" (Tyler Museum of Art, 2016) and "Ansel Adams: Early Works" (Tyler Museum of Art, 2015).

Prior to her current position, Reinert served as Executive Director of Elkhorn Valley Museum, where she transformed the cultural and physical presence of the museum and expanded its audience engagement by creating new interdisciplinary exhibitions and permanent exhibits, establishing operational systems, developing new community programs, and cultivating new partnerships with community organizations and businesses. Reinert previously worked in different capacities at the Tyler Museum of Art and San Antonio Museum of Art.

Reinert has presented at the Midwest Art History Society Annual Conference, the Mid-America College Art Association Annual Conference, the University of Texas at Tyler, the Tyler Museum of Art, and the Ulrich Museum of Art; and was accepted to present at the New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Reinert has presented as a guest lecturer on topics related to curatorial practice and object-based learning, and she co-organized and hosted the University of Texas at Tyler Annual Art History Symposium in 2016 and 2017. Reinert earned an MA in Art History from the University of Texas at Tyler, and holds a BA in Art History with a Studio Art minor from UT.

Areas of research:
Contemporary art, modernism, feminist theory, intersectionality, metamodernism, 19th-century and fin-de-siècle Western art history

Select Papers:
University Art Museums as Catalysts for Inclusive Engagement, (2024) with co-presenters Vivian Zavataro and Kristin Beal

Sacra Nouveau: Sacred Iconography Reinterpreted in the Work of Margaret and Frances Macdonald, (2021)
https://scholarworks.uttyler.edu/art_grad/4/

Into the Woods and Up the Tower: Denis Before 1895 and the Iconography of Maurice Maeterlinck's Marionette Dramas, (2018)

Dead and Young in the Water: The Lovesick Floating Martyr, the Fantasy of Feminine Dependency, and Bonnard's Bathtub Women, (2017)

Hilma af Klint: Abstraction, Spiritualism, Intention, (2016)

Caravaggio Looks to Titian: The Musicians Revisited, (2015)