UMFA Hires New Curator of European, American and Regional Art

Salt Lake City – The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) at the University of Utah is pleased to announce that Leslie Anderson-Perkins has joined the UMFA staff as the Museum’s new Curator of European, American and Regional Art.

Anderson-Perkins comes to the UMFA from the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), where she was curatorial assistant for European and American painting, sculpture and works on paper. She is the recipient of many prestigious grants, honors and awards, including a Samuel H. Kress Interpretive Fellowship at the IMA, an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship. A specialist in Scandinavian art, she has lectured on a variety of topics related to 19th- and 20th-century European and American art. Her research has been presented at the Frick Collection–Institute of Fine Arts Symposium and the College Art Association, and published in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Anderson-Perkins is completing her PhD in art history at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY).

“Leslie is an incredibly smart and talented curator whose depth of scholarship, passion for research, and curatorial creativity will be invaluable as she brings a fresh eye to these important collections and plans new ways of presenting them to our visitors,” said Gretchen Dietrich, the UMFA’s executive director.

The UMFA’s holdings in European, American and the art of Utah and the American West are the cornerstone of the Museum’s extensive permanent collection of more than 21,000 objects—a collection of greater depth and breadth than any other in the Intermountain West. Anderson-Perkins will develop new permanent collection exhibitions and participate in two new grant-funded projects: She will consult with the Museum’s collections staff and an external conservator as they assess conservation needs for the Museum’s European paintings, a project funded by a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) “Art Works” grant. She will also work with Museum educators and a soon-to-be-named Kress Interpretive Fellow on the creation of curricular, interpretive and educational materials centered on the European collection. She joins UMFA Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Whitney Tassie and Curator of Antiquities Luke Kelly to round out the UMFA curatorial team.

“I am elated to join the UMFA’s staff,” Anderson-Perkins said. “I am especially looking forward to working with colleagues to identify new narratives and connections among objects in this fine permanent collection, and to helping visitors engage in fresh ways with these important works of art.”

Anderson-Perkins has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Florida and master’s degrees in art history from Florida and CUNY. Prior to her appointment at the IMA, she held internships at the National Gallery of Denmark, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and Florida’s Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art. In addition, Anderson-Perkins brings more than six years of experience in the classroom to her new role. She has taught at Brooklyn College, Parsons School of Design, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis and the University of Indianapolis.

For more information call (801) 581-7332 or visit www.umfa.utah.edu