Background
Butera was born on November 15, 1951 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, United States; the daughter of Joseph Henry Butera and Anne Rita Fabbri.
Virginia Butera with artist/photographer Joe Freeman.
Dick Eger and Virginia Fabbri Butera at Lino Tagliapietra exhibition at the Morris Museum.
Butera was born on November 15, 1951 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, United States; the daughter of Joseph Henry Butera and Anne Rita Fabbri.
Butera finished the Baldwin School in 1969. Four years later she received a Bachelor of Arts in Renaissance Studies from Trinity College. Then in 1975, Virginia was given a Master of Arts in History of Art from Johns Hopkins University.
Also in 2002, she earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Art History from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York.
Butera began his career as a teaching assistant of introduction to art history at Johns Hopkins University in 1974. A year later she became a gallery assistant at the Tomlinson Collection of Fine Art Prints. Then in 1976, Virginia took a position of a museum fellow at Smithsonian American Art Museum and held the position for a year. In 1978, she served as a National Endowment for the Arts intern of the Prints, Drawings and Photographs Department at Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Also Butera worked as an assistant to the director at the same museum from 1979 to 1981. In 1984, she held the position of a teaching assistant of introduction to art history at Queens College. A year later Virginia became a TV Script Writing Assistant to Perry Miller Adato for program "Art of the Western World" at WNET station. In addition, she served as an adjunct instructor, full professor and then promoted to an associate professor at College of Saint Elizabeth, where she worked in 1997-2008.
In 2006, she was appointed an exhibition policy and program consultant at Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. Then in 2007, Butera took a position of a chairperson of Exhibition Review Panel at Visual Arts Center of New Jersey and held it for three years. Since 2008 Virginia has been a director of the Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery, professor of art history and a chairperson of the art and music programs at College of Saint Elizabeth.
She has curated art exhibitions for more than forty years for museums and galleries such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery and other institutions around the country. In January 2017, she opened her thirty-third major exhibition, Building Books, at the Maloney Art Gallery.
Butera is a member of the American Alliance of Museums, Art Table, College Art Association, Morris Arts and Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.
Virginia Butera is married and has a child.