Christy Schneider

Christy Schneider (she/her) was senior manager of exhibition projects and programming at the Science History Institute until 2024. She worked in collaboration with colleagues in visitor engagement and curatorial affairs, as well as with community partners to develop exhibitions and public programs. She enjoys leading multidisciplinary teams to create projects that explore intersections between history, science, and art.

Schneider managed the reinterpretation of the Institute’s permanent exhibition, which features interactive media, updated narratives, and vivid graphic design. Other projects include Second Skin: The Science of Stretch about the science and cultural impact of stretch textiles—from swimsuits to medical devices. In Particle Falls, she worked with artist Andrea Polli to project a live visualization of air quality data onto a wall that faces Philadelphia’s Broad Street.

Schneider is eager to develop an ongoing artist-in-residence program that engages artists and writers in the Science History Institute’s collections. She penned a collections blog post titled The Color of Extraction based on Enabling Transparency, an exhibition of work by Anna Mlasowsky, the Institute’s inaugural artist-in-residence who explored the optical qualities and environmental impact of the rare earth elements.

In over two decades of work in public history and arts administration, Schneider has also held leadership positions in museum education and programming at the Philadelphia History Museum and Bartram’s Garden. With groups of students on field trips, she peered at the oldest surviving ginkgo tree in North America and made prints from its fan-shaped leaves. Schneider enjoys how the history of science and technology engages critical questions about the materials, people, and systems that change our environment and our sense of self.

She holds a certificate from the Nonprofit Executive Leadership Institute at Bryn Mawr School of Social Work, an MA in museum education from the University of the Arts, and a BFA in sculpture from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art.