General
Culture and Society
Arts and Humanities
Education
General
Arts and Humanities
Culture and Society
New director brings educational experience, broad vision to WFMA
In September 2025, Matthew Bailey was really excited to get an opportunity to see the Green Bay Packers play the Dallas Cowboys, so he made the trip from Fort Smith to Arlington to visit family and watch the only tied game of the 2025 NFL season.
Like many fans, Bailey thought the 40-40 result was less than fulfilling. But Bailey came out a winner, a victory that involved a more permanent trip to Texas. Bailey received a message from Midwestern State University Provost Margaret Brown Marsden while he was en route to Arlington. Soon after, Bailey accepted the position as director and curator at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at MSU Texas.
Bailey, who earned his doctorate in art history from Washington University, St. Louis, in 2014, was gallery director and assistant professor in the Department of Art & Design at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith from 2021-25. He started at WFMA on December 1.
“It was really perfect for me,” Bailey said. “I love teaching, and I love curating. When I saw the position, the fact that you had an art museum on campus, and I could be involved in teaching and as museum director, it was a match. I was really excited about this.”
“The core of his experience is in education,” Brown Marsden said. “He wants to educate and apply that experience using the museum as his medium for education. I love that he’s an artist, he’s a curator, and he’s an educator. And he is a painter, too. He has seen all stages of what goes on in a museum, and he can communicate that to so many people.”
Bailey knew as a student at the University of Kansas that he wanted to major in art history. He not only enjoyed art, but also took to the history of it. “As an idealistic kid, I had no idea what a career in that world would entail,” Bailey said.
Bailey earned a BFA from the University of Kansas and an MA and PhD in art history from Washington University in St. Louis.
Bailey embraces the chance to spark a desire to interact with art for students and community members alike, from any background. He has more than 20 years of teaching experience, and there are plans for him to do the same at MSU Texas. Bailey also considers work at the museum a teaching opportunity.
“I always think of an exhibition as a classroom,” Bailey said. “It’s a formal place of learning parallel to the classroom. I always think of myself as an educator when I’m curating.”
His goal in that space or when leading a classroom was to “spark someone’s curiosity in the arts. I would inevitably tap into someone’s interest, and that was the best part. That’s what I always hope for in exhibitions, too.”
He challenges himself by asking, “How can I encourage thinking about different perspectives and experiences throughout the world. Without teaching, whether it means teaching in the classroom or teaching in the gallery, I feel kind of empty.”
Bailey outlined a few goals as his mission at WFMA. He also said it’s “already a strong museum. We have a
fantastic collection, and we want to keep pushing what you guys were already doing.”
Bailey said he thinks of a teaching museum as “an academic museum that utilizes its collections to teach museum practice to students.”
One goal for Bailey and MSU Texas is to develop a Museum Studies minor to combine history, art, museum, and library. Brown Marsden hopes that minor will be available in Fall 2027. She believes that will lead to more professional opportunities for MSU Texas students to explore other opportunities to work in the arts beyond creating the art. “Workforce development is one of the key things we’re trying to do,” Brown Marsden said.
“I also think of a teaching museum as one that uses its collections and exhibitions to teach across curricula,” Bailey said. “Students and faculty across campus can utilize the visual arts. It’s about trying to integrate ourselves across the colleges. You have to be really creative, but there are ways to apply visual arts to science or mathematics. It takes a collaborative effort.”
Another mission is teaching museum for K-12 programming, and sometimes that will be WFMA going into schools to share. Bailey wants to see grade-school kids introduced to the visual arts. “By encouraging curiosity in the arts, we are encouraging support for the museum itself,” Bailey said.
And Bailey’s third vision is strengthen WFMA as a “Community Center. It already is a community center, but we want to make sure the community knows that it’s for them.”
He’s excited to have a talented team around him at WFMA, after working as a one-man operation in his previous job, which did give him the chance to respect every aspect of museum work. “It always seemed like the job was perfectly entailed to my desires and interests,” Bailey said.
Bailey didn’t foresee this role growing up as the son of a pastor in the St. Louis area and then finishing high school in southeast Kansas. He started college at Pittsburg State in Kansas.
“I also grew up in churches, because my dad was a pastor, and most of the services I was looking around at different architecture in the place, much to his chagrin,” Bailey said.
But that eye for detail and quest for understanding of the art have served him well. “A long time ago, my sister would take me to a public art museum in St. Louis,” Bailey said. “When I was in high school, I started going to museums again and remembered how much I enjoyed that experience, looking at objects and studying them.”
And he hasn’t stopped studying what makes a museum a great place to spend quality time since then.
“Being able to study it for me is much more exciting,” Bailey said. “When I took art history classes, as a student, it just made sense to me,” Bailey said.
“I don’t think I’m good at much else. I am good at being creative and interpreting objects and images and what they mean, and how they would relate to the place and time they were created.”
Related Posts
General
Sports
Health and Wellness
Culture and Society
Student Life
National Champions
Culture and Society
Science and Technology
Student Life
General
First-Generation Success
General
Culture and Society
Arts and Humanities