NEW YORK – Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that he made two recent appointments within the museum’s curatorial departments. Joanne Pillsbury, a specialist in the arts of the ancient Americas, joined the museum’s staff on September 9 as the Andrall E. Pearson Curator in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. And Ronda Kasl, a specialist in the art of Spain and Colonial Latin America, began work on July 1 as a Curator in the American Wing.
In making the announcement, Mr. Campbell stated: “The arrival of these two fine scholars will allow us to enhance and develop our coverage of artistic traditions that developed across the Americas both before colonialism and beyond. I look forward to working with Joanne to advance appreciation for the Met’s ancient American holdings, an area in which the Museum has been a long-time leader, and to focusing with Ronda on building a significant representation of Colonial Latin American art.”
Joanne Pillsbury
The new Andrall E. Pearson Curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas is Joanne Pillsbury, who was formerly Associate Director at the Getty Research Institute. A specialist in the arts of the ancient Americas, she served as Director of Studies for the Pre-Columbian Program at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University, from 2005 to 2012. Earlier in her career, she was the Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies at the University of Maryland (2002-2005), and Assistant Dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (1995-99). She has taught at Johns Hopkins University and the University of East Anglia.
Pillsbury publishes and lectures extensively. She was editor of the three-volume Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Studies, 1530-1900 and Past Presented: Archaeological Illustration and the Ancient Americas, among other publications. As co-editor of the 2012 catalogue Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks—with Miriam Doutriaux, Reiko Ishihara-Brito, and Alexandre Tokovinine—she received the College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published under the auspices of a small museum, library, or collection.
Ms. Pillsbury received her B.A. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history and archaeology from Columbia University.
Ronda Kasl
Prior to her appointment as Curator of Colonial Latin American art at the Metropolitan Museum, Ronda Kasl was Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture before 1800 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (2008-2013). She previously served there as Assistant Curator, Associate Curator, and Curator (1992-2008). She organized exhibitions at the Indianapolis Museum that included Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World (2009-2010), Giovanni Bellini and the Art of Devotion (2005), and Painting in Spain in the Age of Enlightenment (1997). Among her publications is The Making of Hispano-Flemish Style: Art, Commerce and Politics in Fifteenth-Century Castile (2013, in press). Works in progress include a scholarly catalogue of early Spanish paintings (pre-1600) in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among her many grants and fellowships, she was awarded a Chester Dale Fellowship in the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum for six months in 2012-2013.
Ms. Kasl received her B.A. in art from the University of Tulsa, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
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