Margaret Bodell is a New England-based consultant and a pioneer in placemaking and creative workforce development for people with disabilities. Her initiatives, including Project Storefronts, City Canvas, and CreateHereNow, became national models in economic development after receiving multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and ArtPlace America. In 2015, she was awarded the first Creative Economy Award from the New England Foundation for the Arts.

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Bodell has founded alternative galleries and programs in Connecticut and New York City that support inclusion and elevate new cultural contributors, including artists, activists, and community-based public art initiatives. She was among the original founding dealers of the New York Outsider Art Fair in 1993.

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In 1997, she curated the first survey exhibition of New England’s self-taught and outsider artists, Pure Vision, bringing together art programs from across the region that had previously been largely unknown.

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Over the next three decades, Bodell co-founded Goods NYC, LAND in Brooklyn, East Street Arts, UArts, and Inspire Arts in Connecticut. She is currently working with Connecticut’s largest social service provider, Marrakech, offering consulting services to support creative individuals who are autistic and hearing-impaired.

 

During the 2000s, Bodell and MaryAnn Fahey launched Umbrella Arts, which became known for its rare presentations of exceptional talent and curatorial experimentation in New York’s East Village. The organization curated monthly exhibitions and events and organized several large-scale exhibitions at Cooper Union, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and The New Museum in New York City.

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Bodell’s current initiative, PREview, based in Bridgeport, Connecticut, features artist-activists and elder artists and collaborates with a multidisciplinary design team.

 

PREview showcases artists from New England and New York and hosts an Emerging Collectors Series designed to highlight new work while educating collectors on building and managing art collections that reflect their personal and social values.