Mia D'Avanza

Mia has primary responsibility for instruction and outreach to students, faculty, and staff of the History of Art department and the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and she serves as supervisor to the Fisher Fine Arts Library bargaining unit staff. In addition, Mia has a role in building a designated area of the Fisher Fine Arts collection, working collaboratively with Fisher staff on collection management. As a subject librarian, Mia collaborates with colleagues within the Libraries and across campus, participating in Libraries initiatives to support authors and publishing and in cross-Libraries programming. She has a passion for supporting innovative scholarship through arts-related research and instruction and by thinking strategically about access policies and collections.

Before joining the Penn Libraries, Mia was the program coordinator for the University's Penn Program for Environmental Humanities. At PPEH, she consulted with affiliated faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students to document and share their work in digital archives and exhibits, and she was instrumental in building relationships with Philadelphia cultural centers such as the Independence Sea Port Museum. Previously, she served as Kress Fellow in Art Librarianship at the Haas Family Arts Library & Yale Center for British Art, curating exhibits, processing archival collections, and providing in-person and electronic reference services for the British Art Reference Library and for the Yale Libraries. Mia was also the reference librarian and exhibitions coordinator for the New York Botanical Garden where she served as reference librarian and worked with the Development team to secure NEA, IMLS, and NEH grant funding. Additionally, she was a member of the senior management team at the New York Society Library, serving as Head of Circulation, supervising all public services, including staff supervision, reference and instruction, stacks maintenance, and facilities for the historic NYSL building. While at the New York Society Library, Mia developed a refreshed reference and instruction program, she worked with the cataloging and acquisitions department to improve collection management and access, and she was active in art-specific collection development.

Mia received her MLIS from the University of South Florida and degrees in painting and art history
from the University of Florida.