The Morgan Library Names John Marciari to Head its Department of Drawings & Prints
New York, NY, June 11, 2014—John Marciari, an independent curator and scholar who most recently held the position of Curator of European Art and Head of Provenance Research at the San Diego Museum of Art, has been chosen to lead the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library & Museum.
With the title of Charles W. Engelhard Curator and Department Head, Marciari will oversee a collection that is renowned throughout the world. Drawings and Prints is one of the largest of the Morgan’s curatorial departments and its approximately 25,000 works span the fourteenth century through the nineteenth century. The department is especially strong in drawings from the Italian, French, Dutch, and British schools, and the list of important artists represented is vast, ranging from Michelangelo and Raphael to Dürer, Rubens, Fragonard, David, Watteau, Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, Ingres, and Degas, among other notables. The department also has the largest and finest collection of Rembrandt etchings in America.
A specialist in Italian and Spanish art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Marciari has organized numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions on subjects ranging from Renaissance prints to German Expressionism. He has curated both large-scale drawings shows such as Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery to more focused exhibitions, such as From Rembrandt’s Studio: The Prints of Ferdinand Bol, and published widely on the drawings of such masters as Paolo Veronese, Federico Barocci, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, and Pier Francesco Mola. His recent exhibition Francesco Vanni: Art in Late Renaissance Siena, on view at the Yale University Art Gallery in 2013, included much new research and was named to several best-of-the-year lists. At the San Diego Museum of Art, where he served from 2008 to 2013, he was responsible for exhibitions covering a broad variety of topics and periods such as Life and Truth: French Landscapes from Corot to Monet, Picasso-Miró-Calder, and The Human Beast: German Expressionism at the San Diego Museum of Art. He also oversaw a number of major reinstallations of its permanent collections. Marciari received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
“I am delighted that John Marciari will be joining the talented team of curators in our Department of Drawings and Prints,” said William M. Griswold, Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “John is a noted scholar and curator with an exceptional record of achievement in the areas of connoisseurship, collection-building, and public engagement. He comes to the Morgan at a time of exciting activity in the department as its exhibition program grows, its collections are being digitized for greater public access, and the two-year-old Morgan Drawing Institute is exploring new areas of research and new collaborative projects with other museums.”
Prior to joining the San Diego Museum of Art, Marciari had a long association with Yale University’s art museums and libraries. He held several curatorial positions at Yale University Art Gallery from 2002 to 2008 and also served on the staffs of the Beinecke Library and the Yale Center for British Art. From 2003 to 2007, he was a lecturer in the university’s Department of the History of Art and also was a member of its dissertation and Ph.D. examination committees.
Marciari’s current projects include the catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings before 1850 at the San Diego Museum of Art, and an essay for a catalogue that will accompany the exhibition in Spain of the Education of the Virgin altarpiece at the Yale University Art Gallery. Marciari was responsible for the research that uncovered the work as a piece by Velázquez, a discovery that was major news in the world of art in 2010.
“John Marciari brings a broad array of talents to our group of curatorial department heads at the Morgan,” said Peggy Fogelman, Director of Collections, who oversees activities in the Morgan’s eight curatorial areas. “The vitality of the museum’s exhibition program has been on a steady rise for several years, and John will surely continue its advancement with his creative and dynamic approach. He is able to think institutionally and will provide strong leadership for his department and the museum’s related activities. Moreover, his academic credentials are formidable, and I look forward to working with him on many new scholarly initiatives in a department whose collections are internationally renowned.”
The recipient of numerous prizes, fellowships, and grants, Marciari has published more than thirty scholarly essays in art publications and exhibition catalogues. He is also a frequent lecturer on a broad range of art historical topics and serves on the prize committee of the Association of Art Museum Curators.
“I’m absolutely thrilled with the opportunity to join the team at the Morgan,” said Marciari. “The drawing collection is already world-class, but it continues to grow, and I relish the chance to build the collection through further acquisitions. As we move forward with cataloging and digitizing the collection, moreover, there is much yet to be said about these works. Through exhibitions and publications, and through the programs of the Drawings Institute, I look forward to helping make the collection, and the research on it, ever more accessible to scholars and the public.”
