Isabella Chilcoat ’23 Looks Ahead to a Career in the Art World

The graduating senior art history major had opportunities to hone skills in arts research, curation, management, acquisition and more at UMD.

By Jessica Weiss ’05 

Despite her lifelong love of art and plenty of coursework in the subject at the University of Maryland, Isabella Chilcoat was nervous to give her first ever tour in her new job as a docent at the Stamp Art gallery. To ease her fears, she prepared a detailed script. But as the tour began, Chilcoat felt perfectly calm. 

“I didn’t even need the script,” Chilcoat said. “I just remember feeling so in touch with how the pieces connected to one another and what they were expressing that nothing else mattered in that moment. It was really special.”

In the two-and-a-half-years since, the senior art history major and past president of the undergraduate Art History Association, who completes her degree next week, has deepened her connection to art and built her confidence in numerous areas of the field. Beyond tours, she intimately explored the gallery’s management and exhibition planning. She also helped bring a number of new artworks to campus and even played a role in an upcoming exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA).

Chilcoat has found in art the power to bring healing and to expand her mind, especially against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and multiple national and global crises that she said deeply impacted her college experience. 

“There's a lot of catharsis in contemporary art and a lot of visceral emotion, and I think that's so needed for viewers to really break out of their shell and get to the core of what can connect us as human beings,” she said. 

Chilcoat credits the solitary months at the start of the pandemic, during her freshman year, with setting her on a path in art history. Growing up in Baltimore City, she regularly attended free children’s programs at the Walters Art Gallery and the BMA and had a lot of exposure to diverse art forms. When the world went into lockdown, she decided to lean into her love of art and switched her major from government and politics. “The pandemic shook everything up for me,” she said. “I felt art was calling me and where I was meant to be.” 

Immediately, Chilcoat reveled in the opportunity to engage in wide-ranging discussions about the significance and history of art. After initially focusing on the Renaissance period, a class called “Art and Difference,” taught by Professor Jordana Saggese, opened her eyes to the connection between the arts and contemporary social issues and pushed her to pivot to studying more modern works. She also savored “Public Art” with Associate Professor Abigail McEwen, which included a walking tour of Washington, D.C., and discussion of controversies over monument destruction.

She also began taking studio art courses. Though initially intended to accompany her studies in art history, Chilcoat said making art—painting, namely—has become an important and cathartic element of her life. Her works explore vulnerable themes like personal and family traumas and "interior landscapes" that represent her imagined mental organization.

She began working at the Stamp Gallery in 2021, which she called an “instrumental part” of her educational and personal development at UMD. She supported a number of workshops and classes offered by the Stamp’s Studio A that provided hands-on experience in art processes, as well as curated a pop-up exhibition to mark 50 years of Black Greek life on campus. She was also part of the 2022–23 Contemporary Art Purchasing Program Committee, an opportunity for five students to select and purchase contemporary art for the Stamp Student Union’s permanent collection. 

Studio A and Stamp Gallery Manager Tara Youngborg called Chilcoat a “true gem” who has been deeply involved in every aspect of the arts in Stamp: “She has had an undeniable impact, including her work on the Contemporary Art Purchasing Program, teaching art classes and working with summer art campers, and I know that many people have been touched by her enthusiasm for art,” Youngborg said. “She will be a huge benefit to any arts organization or program.” 

Now, as she prepares for a career in the art world, Chilcoat is also looking ahead to the BMA’s forthcoming 50-year career retrospective of the Baltimore-based artist Joyce J. Scott; Chilcoat was an intern at the BMA last year, focused on the exhibition. (She worked especially closely with Ph.D. candidate Cecilia Wichmann M.A. ’15, the associate curator of contemporary art at the BMA and the exhibition’s co-curator.) And one of her own art pieces will appear in the Stamp Gallery’s Juried Student Exhibition in February. 

Chilcoat said she’s indebted to her many professors and mentors in the art history department and at Stamp for helping her land opportunities to explore her interests and broaden her skillset. “There aren’t even words to do it justice; UMD was the first place that I really built a home for myself,” she said. “It's so bittersweet to finish.” 

Photos courtesy of Isabella Chilcoat.