The Morgan Announces Elizabeth Abbarno as Director of Exhibition and Collection Management

New York – The Morgan Library & Museum announces the appointment of Elizabeth Abbarno as Director of Exhibition and Collection Management. In this critical role, Abbarno will oversee the implementation of the Morgan’s ambitious exhibition program and take a lead role in stewarding a collection that ranges from ancient Western Asian seals and tablets and medieval manuscripts to contemporary drawings and photography.

“The addition of Elizabeth Abbarno to the Morgan’s Exhibitions team is crucial to the museum’s ecosystem,” said Colin B. Bailey, Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “We are delighted to bring her extensive experience to our ever-changing exhibition program and the management of our storied and growing collection.”

Abbarno comes to the Morgan with more than a decade of experience in project management, registration, and collections care, specializing in exhibition administration and the planning and execution of logistics for high-value exhibition tours. Most recently, she was the Assistant Director of Exhibitions at the Jewish Museum, where she was responsible for overseeing and implementing temporary special exhibitions, collection rotations, and traveling exhibitions. Previously, she held a series of increasingly senior positions at the American Federation of Arts (AFA), where she worked from 2012 to 2019, culminating in the role of Head Registrar. In this capacity, she led a team of registrars in the organization of traveling exhibition tours, overseeing up to twenty concurrent exhibitions. She also managed the logistics for special exhibition projects such as Women Artists in Paris, 1850–1900, which featured loans from sixty-six lenders in eleven countries. Prior to joining the AFA, she was actively engaged in collections stewardship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, where she worked on the assessment and acquisition of the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection. Abbarno holds a master’s in Museum Studies from New York University and graduated magna cum laude in Art History with a minor in French from the University of Oklahoma.

“I am thrilled to be joining such an accomplished team of museum professionals,” said Abbarno. “I look forward to collaborating with colleagues in my department and across the museum in service of the care of the collection and the creation of the Morgan's world-class exhibitions. I will seek to build on the institution’s reputation for excellence in the field, working to ensure that the Morgan is a standard-bearer for museum collection best practices and forging relationships through traveling exhibitions and other partnerships.”