Marcella Hackbardt is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator living in central Ohio. She is Professor and Chair of studio art at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Her work explores aspects of knowledge, self-reflection, symbolic states, and realms of interpretation in medical research regarding nutrition and neurodegenerative disease.

She received her M.F.A. in studio art/photography from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and a B.A. in studio art from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her work has been included in exhibitions at The Girl’s Club Collection in Fort Lauderdale, Station Independent Projects in New York, Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and at The University of Notre Dame, among others. Her work is included in the book Keeper of the Hearth: Picturing Roland Barthes’ Unseen Photograph, ed. Odette England (Schilt Press), as well asTypology of Intimacy, editor and artistic project designer Francisco Moura Veiga, with reproductions of and essay on her series True Confessionals, in conjunction with the installation and exhibition entrée & homage, Basel, Switzerland. Two of her projected works have been performed at the Ingenuity Festival of Art and Technology, Cleveland. A book project titled Various Unbaked Cookies was included in an exhibition based on the book Various Small Books (MIT Press) at Gagosian Gallery in New York and Paris, and at the Museum Brandhorst in Munich, Germany.

Her curatorial projects include Material Message: Photographs of Fabric, featuring work by seven contemporary photographers at The Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hackbardt presented lectures on Material Message in 2019 at the National Society for Photographic Educators conference, and at the University of Johannesburg and at the Encounters with the [Im]material International Symposium at the Wits Art Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa.

She has received recognition and support for her work from OAC Individual Excellence Grants, Kenyon College Faculty grants, the Midwest Society for Photographic Educators, and the Great Lakes Colleges Association. In 2014 and 2021, she was the Director of the Kenyon Rome Program, traveling to Rome with Kenyon students for four months. Her service record includes her work as Kenyon College Chair of Faculty and Studio Art Department Chair, and a Professional Practices Committee Member for the College Art Association. She has been a Children’s Champion for the Columbus Nationwide Children’s Hospital Marathon, and Half Marathon, participating in the marathons and raising thousands of dollars for young patients.