Meet the Staff
Whitney Western Art Museum staff
Meet the staff of the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Susan Barnett and Ashlea Espinal.
Susan Barnett
Margaret and Dick Scarlett Curator of Western American Art for the Whitney Western Art Museum
Phone: 307-578-4139
[email protected]
Susan Barnett is the Margaret and Dick Scarlett Curator of Western American Art for the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Her broad museum experience includes serving as executive director, curator, and collections manager. She also worked as a consultant specializing in exhibition curation, collections stewardship, nonprofit board development, marketing, and strategic planning.
She knows and loves the American West and the art the region inspires, a connection forged through 25 years in Montana, including time spent on working cattle ranches, in museums, and as a gallery owner. Barnett previously served as curator for the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings. With her appointment to the Whitney curator position, she was thrilled to return to the Rocky Mountain West.
Barnett earned her Master of Arts in Art History, along with a certificate in Museum Studies, from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in 2011. She previously earned a Bachelor of Arts in Printmaking from Montana State University, Bozeman.
Barnett’s recent focus has been contemporary art of the West, exhibiting regional artists such as James Bama, Will James, Tracy Linder, and Bill Stockton. Her research interests also include Euro-American and Indigenous American arts, studio craft, photography, and printmaking. With a background in studio art, Barnett has a strong understanding of materials and artistic processes.
Ashlea Espinal
Assistant Curator, Whitney Western Art Museum
Phone: 307-578-4051
[email protected]
Dr. Ashlea Espinal joined the Whitney Western Art Museum in November 2021 as Curatorial Assistant and was promoted to Assistant Curator in May 2023. Before joining the Whitney, Espinal completed a MA in Art and Museum Studies at Georgetown University in 2010, and her doctorate in Native American Art History at the University of Oklahoma in 2019.
Espinal has served as an art history adjunct instructor from 2019 to 2020 for both the University of Oklahoma and Bacone College. Additionally, she has held numerous internships at museums throughout the country, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and the Denver Art Museum. Her area of focus is contemporary Native arts, and her research and curatorial work merge the disciplines of art history, visual culture, and cultural memory. She is particularly interested in how knowledge is stored and transmitted through art, and how this enables history to be visually written through art and objects.