Press Room—Curator Biographies
The Nelson-Atkins employs a curatorial staff with knowledge ranging from ancient to contemporary art. These experts are available as resources to the press for matters related to both the institution and individual areas of expertise. The Museum’s press office is happy to arrange interviews. Please contact us at press@nelson-atkins.org or 816.751.1321.
Deborah Emont Scott
Chief Curator
Deborah Emont Scott has served as the chief curator at the Nelson-Atkins since 1998. Prior to that she was the Sanders Sosland Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art (1983 – 2000) at the Nelson-Atkins. During her tenure as head of the modern and contemporary department she was the project director for the Kansas City Sculpture Park and director of the Modern Sculpture Initiative. Educated at Rutgers University, Livingston College, (B.A. 1973) and Oberlin College (M.A. 1979), Deborah now leads a curatorial division of 13 in her position as chief curator.
Robert Cohon
Curator, Ancient Art
Robert Cohon has been Curator of Art of the Ancient World at the Nelson-Atkins and taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City as a joint-appointment since 1985. With a doctorate from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, he has published extensively in international journals on Roman decorative marble sculpture and forgeries of ancient art. His work at the Nelson-Atkins has included the development of the shows Discovery and Deceit: Archaeology and the Forger’s Craft (1996–7); Treasures of Deceit (1998–2000); Spring Fashions, 1 B.C. (1998); and Echoes of Eternity: The Egyptian Mummy and the Afterlife (2000). As part of the Archaeological Institute of America’s lecture program, he has presented his research in the United States and Canada. His current scholarship focuses on the role of measurement in the designing of sculpture.
Margaret C. Conrads
Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art
Margaret Conrads, Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art, received her doctorate in art history from the City University of New York Graduate Center after receiving her master's degree from Washington University, St. Louis and bachelor's degree from Connecticut College. Conrads received international recognition for the 2001 exhibition and scholarly catalogue, Winslow Homer and the Critics: Forging a National Art in the 1870s (Princeton University Press, 2001). She is also the editor and a primary author of the forthcoming two-volume scholarly catalogue of the Museum's American painting collection, which features much new research and complete documentation for nearly 270 paintings.
Randall R. Griffey
Associate Curator, American Art
Randall R. Griffey received his doctorate in art history with honors from the University of Kansas in 1999. He was awarded the Sara Roby Fellowship in Twentieth-Century American Realism at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, in 1997. His research, publications and public lectures have focused primarily on American modernist Marsden Hartley and American culture of the 1930s and ‘40s. Griffey acted as resident curator for the Hartley retrospective hosted by the Museum in late 2003. He is a contributing author to the forthcoming scholarly catalog of the Museum’s American painting collection. Griffey also serves as Visiting Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Gaylord Torrence
Fred and Virginia Merrill Curator of American Indian Art
Gaylord Torrence is the Fred and Virginia Merrill Curator of American Indian Art, and Professor Emeritus in Fine Arts, Drake University. Torrence is the author of The American Indian Parfleche: A Tradition of Abstract Painting, considered to be a definitive work in the field, and curator and co-author of Art of the Red Earth People: The Mesquakie of Iowa. He recently served as a principal consultant and contributing author for Arts of Diplomacy: Lewis and Clark’s Indian Collection, a 2003 publication organized by the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.
A specialist in the historic arts of Great Lakes, Prairie and Plains cultures, Torrence has conducted research in museums and private collections throughout the United States, Canada and Europe; he has curated numerous exhibits of Native American Art and worked with Native communities and contemporary artists. He joined The Nelson-Atkins in 2002 as founding curator for the newly established Department of American Indian Art.
Xiaoneng Yang
Curator, Early Chinese Art
Xiaoneng Yang is internationally recognized as a leading scholar of Chinese art, archaeology and history, with an interdisciplinary approach. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Beijing University and earned a doctorate in art history and archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis. He authored numerous publications, which include Reflections of Early China: Décor, Pictographs, and Pictorial Inscriptions (2000); and regularly receives invitations to speak throughout the world. His most recent two-volume book, New Perspectives on China’s Past: Chinese Archaeology in the Twentieth Century, was published in 2004. Since the 1980s, he has organized international exhibitions of Chinese art and archaeology of various periods and themes, exemplified by his exhibition and catalogue The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology (1999). They were the first to use Chinese art masterpieces to present a picture of how archaeology has changed our understanding of the origins and development of Chinese art and civilization.
Ling-en Lu
Assistant Curator, Early Chinese Art
Ling-en Lu, Assistant Curator of Early Chinese Art, joined the Museum in 1999. Born in Taiwan, she holds a doctoral degree in Art History from the University of Kansas as well as a Master’s of Library Science from Indiana University. Ling-en has actively presented papers at Art History conferences and has published several articles on Chinese paintings. During her tenure at the Museum, she has been a part of coordinating The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology, a special international exhibition organized by the Museum and the National Gallery of Art in 1999, and has contributed to the two-volume book, New Perspectives on China’s Past: Chinese Archaeology in the Twentieth Century, which was published by Yale University Press and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in 2004.
Catherine Futter
Helen Jane and R. Hugh "Pat" Uhlmann Curator of Decorative Arts
Catherine Futter has been the Helen Jane and R. Hugh "Pat" Uhlmann Curator of Decorative Arts at the Nelson-Atkins since March 2002. Futter has a bachelor's degree in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from Duke University and an master's degree and doctorate in the history of art from Yale University. Futter focuses on American and European in the field of decorative arts, her specialization is in decorative arts from 1850 to the present.
Elizabeth Williams
Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts
Elizabeth Williams has been with the Decorative Arts department since 2003. She received a master’s degree in art history from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2005 and a bachelor’s of science degree in housing and interior design from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Williams is currently a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Kansas and has actively presented papers at art history conferences. Williams assisted with the Museum’s recent reinstallation of 11th-20th century decorative arts objects and conducted in-depth research on several of the Museum’s period rooms. In 2006, she worked on the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site Conservation Project.
Ian Kennedy
Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward Curator of European Painting and Sculpture
Ian Kennedy has been the Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Nelson-Atkins since 2002. He was educated at Cambridge University and at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where he obtained bachelor's and master's degrees in Art History. He then worked for Christie’s in London and New York for 20 years as Senior Vice President in charge of Old Master Paintings. From 1993, he was President of Simon Dickinson, Inc., New York, agents and dealers in fine art.
Simon Kelly
Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture
Simon Kelly, recently appointed Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, was previously Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in 18th- and 19th-Century Art at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore and Chester Dale Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He obtained a bachelor's degree (first-class honors) from the University of Cambridge and a doctorate in art history from the University of Oxford, where he also taught art history. As a specialist in 19th-century French art, and particularly landscape painting, collecting and cultural markets, he has published extensively in various journals including The Burlington Magazine, Apollo and The Journal of the History of Collections as well as several anthologies. He recently curated the major exhibition, The Road to Impressionism: Landscapes from Corot to Monet (Walters Art Museum, 2004-5) and is co-author of Untamed: the Art of Antoine-Louis Barye (Prestel, 2006).
Jan Schall
Sanders Sosland Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Jan Schall, Sanders Sosland Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Texas at Austin and a master's degree in art history from Washington University in St. Louis. In 2000, Schall curated the NEA-supported millennium exhibition Tempus Fugit: Time Flies and produced both its accompanying catalogue and award winning website. More recently, she has guided collection development, co-curated a five-part exhibition of New Media Projects, overseen the renovation and reinstallation of the Museum’s Kansas City Sculpture Park, and developed and implemented both the program and installation of the modern and contemporary collection in the expanded Museum. She is currently at work on a catalogue of the collection and maintains an active teaching schedule. Schall’s research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Leesa Fanning
Associate Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art
Leesa Fanning is Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Fanning holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Kansas and a master's degree in art history from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She recently co-curated the New Media Projects and curated Realism and Abstraction: Six Degrees of Separation at the Museum. Fanning curated Women in 20th Century Industrial Ceramics at the Jewish Museum of Kansas City in 2002 and at the same institution, Classic to Cutting Edge: Highlights of the Larry and Cindy Meeker Collection in 2003. Fanning has taught courses at the Museum on ritual and myth in modern and contemporary art, Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle and Shirin Neshat’s Turbulent. She has taught classes on contemporary art at the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Missouri, and African art at the University of Kansas.
Cambridge University Press recently published Fanning’s essay, Willem De Kooning’s Women: The Body of the Grotesque, in an anthology called Modern Art and the Grotesque. She is also published on Robert Motherwell and Adolph Gottlieb.
Keith F. Davis
Curator, Photography
Keith F. Davis is Curator of Photography at the Nelson-Atkins and also serves as Fine Art Programs Director for Hallmark Cards Inc., both in Kansas City, Mo. He received a master’s degree in 1979 in art history from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. After a research internship at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, 1978-79, he became Curator of the Hallmark Fine Art Collections.
Since 1979, he has curated some 70 exhibitions from the Hallmark Photographic Collection that have been presented in leading museums across the United States, and from Sydney, Australia, to Lausanne, Switzerland. In addition to teaching and lecturing widely on the history of photography, he is the author of more than a dozen catalogues and books, including An American Century of Photography, From Dry-Plate to Digital: The Hallmark Photographic Collection, 2nd edition (Abrams, 1999) and The Origins of American Photography, From Daguerreotype to Dry-Plate, 1839-1885 (HFF/NAMA, 2007). His various awards include a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1986-87) for his work on the Civil-War era photographer George N. Barnard.
April M. Watson
Associate Curator, Photography
April M. Watson holds a master’s degree in Art History from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas. She was awarded an NEA Curatorial Internship at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, where she worked on a retrospective of the artist William Christenberry. Watson has contributed writing and scholarship on photography and its history to numerous exhibitions and catalogues for the University of New Mexico Art Museum, the Center for Creative Photography, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has also taught courses in the history of photography at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, and in modern and contemporary art at the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Kansas. Recently she contributed to the award-winning monograph The Art of Frederick Sommer: Photography, Drawing, Collage (2005).
Jane Aspinwall
Assistant Curator, Photography
Jane Aspinwall has worked with the Hallmark Photographic Collection since 1999. Previous to this appointment, she has served as the curatorial assistant of Photography and has worked in the American Art department of the Nelson-Atkins. Aspinwall received a master’s degree in 2001 in art history from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She also holds a master’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in arts management received in 1992 from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is a contributor to the book and a co-organizer of the exhibition Developing Greatness: Origins of American Photography, 1839-1885, one of the inaugural exhibitions held in the Museum’s new Bloch Building in 2007.