Donna McNeil | |
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Born | 1940s Würzburg, Germany |
Education |
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Occupation(s) | Arts advocate, author, and curator |
Honours | Maine College of Art honorary PhD |
Donna McNeil (born 1940s) [lower-alpha 1] is an American arts advocate, author, and curator. She is the founding executive director of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation and the former director of the Maine Arts Commission.
McNeil was born in Würzburg, Germany. [1] She was educated at Syracuse University, where she earned a bachelor of fine arts in painting and Harvard University, where she earned a master of arts in liberal studies focused on art history. She holds an honorary Ph.D in Fine Arts from the Maine College of Art. [2]
She was the co-director of Artists in Context and the former executive director of the Maine Arts Commission. [2] She has served as a juror for the National Endowment for the Arts [3] and MacArthur Foundation. [4]
She is the author of the 2017 book There Has to Be Magic: The Art of Evelyn Kok, which won the Excellence in Publishing award at the Maine Literary Awards in 2018. [5] [6] She also wrote Moser: Legacy in Wood about the Thos. Moser company, published in 2015. [7]
Since 2017, McNeil has served as the executive founding director of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, an arts grant and residency in Rockland, Maine. [8]
McNeil has spoken in support of reproductive freedom, describing her own experience with a pre- Roe v. Wade abortion in 1965. [9] [10]
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