Dr Cynthia E. Chin (Cynthia McGinnis Riddle Chin) is an early American art and material culture historian  specializing in dress, textiles, identity, and collecting. At the University of Glasgow, Cynthia traces the development of dress and textile collections in twentieth-century Colonial Revival museums. She was a 2023-2024 Winterthur Fellow.

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Current work also includes her ongoing research and writing on the dress of Martha Washington and the enslaved seamstresses who lived and labored at Mount Vernon. In 2024, after eight years of study of the original object, she recreated a gown owned by Martha Washington. The gown was on view in "New Nation, Many Hands" at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut from 2 July 2024 - 8 November 2024. She looks forward to continuing the next stage of this project.

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Formerly on staff at George Washington's Mount Vernon/The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, Cynthia was also a 2020-21 Research Fellow at the Washington Presidential Library. She earned her doctorate in early American material culture from Georgetown University in 2020 and holds an M.A. in poetry from The Johns Hopkins University. Her writing has been published in literary journals.

 

Adding a background of business to her academic and museum experience, Cynthia served industry and public sector clients as a strategy & analytics consultant at Deloitte Consulting LLC (Monitor Deloitte), working on AI capabilities as their government and private sector marketing lead. She has worked independently for PwC and continues to consult for corporate clients, non-profits, and public-private partnerships.