Barbara Drake Boehm Named
Paul and Jill Ruddock Senior Curator
for The Met Cloisters

(New York, September 9, 2015)— Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today the appointment of Barbara Drake Boehm as Paul and Jill Ruddock Senior Curator for The Met Cloisters.  

In making the announcement, Mr. Campbell said: “I am delighted to appoint Barbara to this new position, a leadership role that recognizes her significant scholarly and administrative achievements at the Met.  With the growth in our program and attendance at The Cloisters, it is time that we create a staff structure that supports this enhanced activity. Barbara’s international stature in her field and her intimate working knowledge of The Cloisters make her perfect for this role. I look forward to working closely with her and Griff Mann in the years to come.”

In this newly created position, Ms. Boehm will support C. Griffith Mann, the Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of the Medieval Department and The Cloisters, by overseeing collections and program design and implementation for The Cloisters, and helping to lead its strategic planning, project management, and operational budget development. She will coordinate the logistical and creative aspects of curatorial and related programs at The Cloisters, working closely with colleagues across the Museum, in order to guide and maintain the vision for this branch of the Met. In addition, she will maintain her active curatorial role in the department, contributing to collections research, planning, exhibitions, and installations.  

Mr. Mann added: “Barbara’s knowledge of the institution, combined with her international stature as a scholar of medieval art, will be critical to shaping our vision for the future. I’m thrilled to work with her in this new role.”

A prolific and world-renowned scholar, Barbara Drake Boehm is currently co-curating a major international loan exhibition, Every People Under Heaven: Jerusalem 1000-1400, together with her Met colleague Melanie Holcomb. Past exhibitions include Enamels of Limoges (1996), Prayer Book for a Queen: The Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux (1999), and Prague, The Crown of Bohemia (2005). More recently, she inaugurated a program of focus exhibitions at The Cloisters with The Game of Kings: Medieval Ivory Chessmen from the Isle of Lewis (2011) and Search for the Unicorn (2013), which celebrated the 75th anniversary of The Cloisters.  

The recipient of many honors and awards over the years, Ms. Boehm has published extensively on subjects relating to her exhibition projects and research on the Met’s permanent collection. Between 2012 and 2015, she served as Director of Curatorial Studies, a joint program of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She has shared her research in lectures and courses at the Courtauld Institute, Musée du Louvre, Edinburgh University, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, Kuwait, among others. 

Barbara Drake Boehm holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a B.A. from Wellesley College. She began her career at the Met as a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Medieval Art in 1983 and rose through the ranks, with her promotion to Curator in 1998 and assignment to The Cloisters in 2008.