With over 30 years of experience in curatorial, collections, and arts management, Ferrell is a celebrated arts leader and long-time champion of Vermont artists. She will join the Fleming on April 27, 2026. 

 “As UVM’s art museum, we are actively reimagining what a university museum can be: inclusive, interdisciplinary, and deeply connected to campus and community,” said Sonja Lunde, Executive Director. “Heather is the kind of curator who can truly bring that vision to life. She understands how to activate a museum as a space of ideas, exchange, and belonging, and her experience working with contemporary artists will be invaluable in reinterpreting our historic collections. That sense of connection between art, ideas, and lived experience is what we want every student, faculty member, and visitor to take away.” 

Ferrell teaches select museum studies courses as adjunct faculty at UVM, and she also started her career in a university museum at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University.  

“I firmly believe that museums – especially university museums – serve as vital centers of scholarship, culture, and learning, reflecting and critically engaging with our place in a complex, intersectional world,” said Ferrell.  

For nearly a decade, Ferrell has been a cornerstone of Burlington City Arts as Curator and Director of Exhibitions. Her past exhibitions include Diana Al-Hadid: Immaterial; Sarah Amos: Unique Multiples; Transcendent: Spirituality in Contemporary Art; Meg Lipke: In the Making; Between the Covers: Works by Jane Kent; and Do We Say Goodbye? Grief, Loss, and Mourning.  

Over the course of her career, she has organized more than 60 original art exhibitions. She has also served as Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Programs at National Museum of Qatar; Deputy Director at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2010–2016); Director of the Salt Lake Art Center, Utah (2008–2010); Director and Curator of the Salina Art Center, Kansas (2005–2008); and Associate Curator of Art at the Boise Art Museum, Idaho (1999–2005). 

Ferrell received her MA in Art History and Museum Studies from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, and is a graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute’s Museum Leaders: The Next Generation (2004).