Sarah Mills is a historian of modern design and contemporary art. Her research focuses on craft media, specifically hand/digital weaving, fiber art and wearables at the intersection of art and industry. As an assistant professor, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the Department of Design and the Art and Art History Department at San José State University. Her work has been supported by fellowships at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, where Mills completed her M.Phil and PhD. Sarah joined the Board of the San José Museum of Quilts and Textiles in 2024 and chairs its exhibition committee.
Contact:
sarah.mills@sjsu.edu
Upcoming Speaking Events:
March 22nd, 2025, Palo Alto Art Center, Cut from the Same Cloth: Textiles and Technology, panel moderator with curator Christine Duval and artists Ahree Lee and Hideo Mabuchi
March 31st, 2025, Unstable Design Lab, University of Colorado Boulder, tbd.
April 4, 2025, “Design and Philosophy: A Case Study of Social Wearables” Midwest Art History Society Conference, Denver, Colorado.
August 15, 2025 “Concept Weaving” at Tronrud Engineering / TC2 Anniversary Event, Norway
October 26, 2025 “Material Engineering: From Liebes to the Tech Textiles of Silicon Valley,” Decorative Arts Trust Symposium, San Francisco
Past Speaking Events:
Textile Society of America, “Becoming Craft, Textiles in the Art Museum,” Textile Society of America, November 14, 2024
San José State University, Thompson Gallery, “Digital Weaving: New Media’s Baby’s Mama,” April 16, 2024
CAA Chicago, “Fictitious Devices: The Extra-Embodied Experience of Kate Hartman’s Wearables,” in the panel “Post-Rationality,” February 17, 2024
OCAD University Toronto Canada, “Wearables, Textiles, and the Material-Media Interface in Contemporary Art,” October 25, 2023
Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland Ohio, “More Than Just Thread Control: Contemporary Weaving and Critical Distance,” June 2023
Prairie Ronde Gallery, Vicksburg, Michigan, “E-textiles: Into the Matrix,” October 2022
Museum of Applied Art and Science, Sydney, Australia, “Love Me in My GloWeave,” June 2022
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York, “The College Art Gallery,” March 2022
Philosophia Honors Club, Westchester Community College, “Gender Fluidity in Art,” October 2021
Visual Arts Center, New Jersey, “The History of Silk Weaving in New Jersey and its Relationship to Contemporary Art,” January 2020
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, “Making the Modern Textile: Dorothy Liebes and the Handwoven Look,” March 2019