The Utah Museum of Fine Arts has a new curator of European, American and Regional Art.

Gretchen Dietrich, UMFA executive director, says Leslie Anderson-Perkins will be “invaluable as she brings a fresh eye to these important collections and plans new ways of presenting them to our visitors.”

Formerly curatorial assistant for European and American painting, sculpture and works on paper at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Anderson-Perkins has received a Samuel H. Kress Interpretive Fellowship, an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship. She is a specialist in Scandinavian 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.

The curator will develop new permanent collection exhibitions and participate in two new grant-funded projects: She will consult with the collections staff and an external conservator as they assess conservation needs for the museum’s European paintings, a project funded by a 2015 NEA grant. She will also work with museum educators and a Kress Interpretive Fellow on the creation of curricular, interpretive and educational materials centered on the European collection.

“I am elated to join the UMFA’s staff,” says Anderson-Perkins. “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.”

She joins UMFA curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Whitney Tassie and curator of Antiquities Luke Kelly to round out the UMFA curatorial team.

Anderson-Perkins is completing her Ph.D. in art history at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). She has a bachelor’s in history from the University of Florida and master’s degrees in art history from Florida and CUNY.

Ann Poore

A graduate of the University of Utah, Ann Poore is a freelance writer and editor who spent most of her career at The Salt Lake Tribune. She was the 2018 recipient of the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Artist Award in the Literary Arts.