Cynthia Nourse Thompson has served six years as Associate Professor and Director of the MFA Book Arts & Printmaking program at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Additionally, Thompson served as Curator and Consulting Visual Arts Director for the Joy Pratt Markham Gallery at Walton Arts Center [WAC] in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Recently, she was Guest Curator for the WAC exhibition, “MIRROR, MIRROR: The Prints of Alison Saar from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation.”
Thompson was previously Associate Professor of Printmaking and Curator of Exhibitions at University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She also served for twelve years as Professor of Paper, Print and Book Arts at Memphis College of Art, Chair of the Fine Arts Department and Curator of Exhibitions and Director of Visiting Artist Lectures. Thompson has been visiting faculty at University of Georgia’s study abroad program in Cortona, Italy; Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy; Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and Penland School of Craft.
She has been awarded numerous residencies including Yaddo, Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop, Visual Studies Workshop, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and a 2021 Maker-Creator Fellowship at Winterthur Museum. Thompson and her artistic collaborator, David Charles Chioffi, have been invited as visiting distinguished academic scholars to the Bodleian Bibliographical Press, Oxford, England, in May of 2021.
Thompson has a BFA in Printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Rutgers University. Thompson has worked at Dieu Donné, Harlan & Weaver Intaglio and the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, now the Brodsky Center at PAFA.
