Photo by Sandra Sellars © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Recently-announced new hires included that of Dr Lisa Brody, who was appointed by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) as its new Jack and Mary Ann Frable curator of ancient art. Brody’s posting follows a two-decade tenure at the Yale University Art Gallery, so we were curious as to why she made the move and what she hopes to do in her new role.
Congratulations on your new posting. After nearly 20 years as an associate curator of ancient art at Yale, what inspired the move?
While at Yale, much of my work was focused on the museum’s important archaeological collections from Dura-Europos, in modern-day Syria, and Gerasa, in modern-day Jordan, excavated by Yale in the 1920s and 30s. During my time there, I oversaw two permanent installations of the collection, two major traveling exhibitions with extensive programming and workshops, wrote several books and articles and increased global awareness and accessibility for the collection and excavation archives. This culminated with an international conference in 2022, which was live-streamed with Arabic translation, and the proceedings’ publication this year, with a digital open access version. I am so proud of all the work that I did with this material and other areas of Yale’s ancient art collection, and I am excited to advance my career overseeing a new collection and new projects at VMFA. I am really thrilled to be at a public institution that prioritizes outreach and accessibility to a wide array of audiences. It’s clearly a vibrant cultural keystone of the city and region.
The press release announcing your appointment notes that you are joining the curatorial team “during this transformative time at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.” Can you expand a little about how VMFA is transforming?
VMFA is embarking on a fantastic expansion and renovation project, the largest in the museum’s history. While this will not directly affect the ancient art galleries, it’s an exciting time for the institution and will offer the opportunity for new cross-collection interpretation, programs and displays. Having a second special exhibition gallery space, in addition to expanded permanent galleries and new events spaces will, I hope, give me the chance to work with my curatorial colleagues on a number of collaborative projects.
One of your priorities at VMFA is to review the collection and work with Karen Daly, VMFA’s senior manager of provenance research, to share provenance information with the public. Are you able to share some instances in your career — at Yale or elsewhere — where your work on provenance was most impactful and/or important?
Provenance research and understanding of cultural heritage ethics and laws are critical for all museums today. I began my academic career as a field archaeologist, so preserving the historical context for artifacts by guarding against illegal excavation, looting and illicit antiquities trading is something I consider of utmost importance.
Even in the years since I started at Yale, the landscape surrounding acquisition and care for antiquities has shifted drastically. In the last several years, my work there also prioritized the scrutiny of potential acquisitions as well as objects in the permanent collection. There were certainly objects that would have been great additions to the collection that, ultimately, we decided not to pursue due to ethical concerns and gaps in documentation.
VMFA leadership feels, as I do, that it is essential to respond to all claims of ownership that may arise, and they have an outstanding track record of collaborating with law enforcement and international departments of antiquities to resolve disputes with thorough research and ethical resolutions.
Red-figure Nolan amphora (storage vessel), circa 480 BCE, attributed to Berlin Painter (Greek, Attic, active Fifth Century BCE), terracotta. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund, 82.204.
Are there specific works in the VMFA’s collection that may have been under-exposed to the public that you’re hoping to show off a bit more prominently?
I haven’t yet had the chance to really familiarize myself with the collection, but I do have some initial ideas about reorganizing the permanent installation to better showcase some of the spectacular objects that VMFA has. I am thinking about some of the Attic vases, such as the red-figure amphora by the Berlin Painter (82.204) and the black-figure amphora by the Leagros Group (60.10), both of which are currently on view but deserve to be featured in a way that visitors are enticed to look at and appreciate them more closely. The museum also holds an incredible selection of Late Roman and Byzantine art (e.g. 66.10, 66.77, 67.52.11) that I would like to put on view at some point.
Can you give us a sneak peek at any of the exhibitions you are coming on board mid-production of, or exhibitions you’d like to start planning?
Yes, in fact! I am actually coming on board mid-production of an exhibition on ancient Pompeii, scheduled for 2027, with objects from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. So, I am going to be diving right into this project, including refining the checklist, collaborating with our exhibition partners and writing the accompanying catalog.
—Madelia Hickman Ring
