Lynda Hartigan

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT LYNDA HARTIGAN

Launching into being the Rose-Marie & Eijk van Otterloo Executive Director & CEO of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA as of August 2021! An exciting new role as the museum\'s first woman director that builds on my contributions as PEM\'s first Chief Curator from 2003 to 2016 and its Deputy Director from 2016 to 2020, as well as my experiences as the Deputy Director for Collections & Research & Chief Innovation Officer at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in 2020 and 2021.Expertise in American art, especially in modern, Black, and self-taught artists, with numerous widely recognized exhibitions and publications. The leading scholar on American artist Joseph Cornell. Curated the traveling retrospective, Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination, co-organized by the Peabody Essex Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and wrote the companion book (Yale University Press, 2007). A career that began at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), Washington, DC, rising to Chief Curator while building internationally recognized collections of American folk art and Black American art, leading a major acquisitions initiative for modern and contemporary art, and serving as the founding curator of SAAM\'s Joseph Cornell Study Center.A graduate of the Claremont Graduate University/Getty Leadership Institute. Currently, a board member of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC).