Jade Papa, MFA

Jade Papa is the Curator of the Textile and Costume Collection at Thomas Jefferson University. She also serves as an adjunct professor teaching History of Textiles and Costume and 20^th Century Fashion Designers. In her role as curator, she cares for the thousands of objects in the collection and works to preserve and make them available in-person and digitally to our students, faculty, staff, and researchers. Visitors to the collection have the opportunity to be up close and personal with the objects, learning about peoples’ lives and the aesthetics of a period of time via the clothes they wore or the textiles they created. This primary evidence also allows them to tap into the values, cultures and worldview of a particular time period. Jade began her career as a theatre costume designer and maker. She earned her graduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Costume Production and, after graduating, stayed on as a professor and theatre artist for ten years. Her work was seen onstage at PlayMakers Repertory Company, the regional theatre at UNC. She worked in Las Vegas on the Michael Jackson “One” Cirque du Soleil show before starting at Jefferson in 2017.