Cynthia Amnéus

Cynthia Amnéus is Chief Curator and Curator of Fashion Arts and Textiles for the Cincinnati Art Museum with more than twenty years of experience in her field. She received her B.A. from Edgecliff College of Xavier University and her M.A. from Illinois State University in textiles and fibers. She has lectured throughout the United States and published in various scholarly journals such as the Journal of the American Institute of Conservation, The Journal for the American Society of Jewelry Historians, and the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion on a variety of fashion and textile topics. In 2004 she won the Victorian Society of America’s Ruth Emery Publication Award for A Separate Sphere: Dressmakers in Cincinnati’s Golden Age, 1877-1922. Amnéus also curated and authored the accompanying catalog for Wedded Perfection: 200 Years of Wedding Gowns (2010). She has curated traveling exhibitions, including High Style: 20^th Century Masterworks from the Brooklyn Costume Collection (2015) and Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion (2018) and guest curated exhibitions for the Textile Museum, Washington D. C. and the Crow Museum of Asian Art in Dallas.

Dr. Julie Aronson

Dr. Julie Aronson has served as Curator of American Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum since 1999. Dr. Aronson earned her B.A. in art history from Brandeis University, M.A. from Williams College, and Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. She is the recognized authority on the sculpture of Bessie Potter Vonnoh, the subject of her doctoral dissertation and her touring exhibition and catalogue Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women (2008). Dr. Aronson’s professional experience includes a position as the assistant curator of American art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and research posts at the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She has published and lectured on topics ranging from New England folk portraiture to painters and sculptors of the Cincinnati region. Her research on the Cincinnati Impressionist Edward Henry Potthast culminated with the exhibition and publication Eternal Summer: The Art of Edward Henry Potthast (2013).  Dr. Aronson has contributed essays to American Naïve Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and other compendia. At the Cincinnati Art Museum, she collaborated with Marjorie E. Wieseman to curate the exhibition Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006) with its landmark catalogue. Dr. Aronson was on the curatorial team that produced the permanent collection displayThe Cincinnati Wing: The Story of Art in the Queen City, and edited and co-authored the companion publication.

Dr. Peter Jonathan Bell

Dr. Peter Jonathan Bell, Curator of European Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, joined the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2017. Bell holds degrees from Oberlin College and the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and earned a Ph.D. in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. He has lectured and published in North America and Europe on Renaissance and Baroque art, and is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Before coming to Cincinnati, Bell was a curator in the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he organized exhibitions on Italian sculpture and ceramics, and contributed to gallery installations, collections research and acquisitions. At the Cincinnati Art Museum, he has mounted exhibitions on Baroque painter Guido Cagnacci, the arts and entertainment of Belle Époque Paris and the mysterious Renaissance masterpiece La Vecchia by Giorgione; led efforts to acquire British and Italian paintings and French sculpture; and published on Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculpture.

Dr. Ainsley M. Cameron

Dr. Ainsley M. Cameron was appointed Curator of South Asian Art, Islamic Art and Antiquities at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2017. Cameron completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford in 2010, where her research focused on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Rajasthani painting workshop at Devgarh. She also holds an MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and a BA in Archaeology and History from the University of Toronto. Cameron comes to Cincinnati with extensive experience in curatorial practice, having previously held positions at institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the British Museum, and the British Library. In Cameron’s role at the Cincinnati Art Museum, she is responsible for the acquisition, research, and display of the museum’s South Asian, Ancient Middle Eastern, Islamic, and Antiquities collections. She has published, delivered lectures, and organized exhibitions that highlight the arts of India and the Islamic World, exploring both historic and contemporary practices. Cameron is also Project Director of a multi-year gallery reinstallation project of CAM’s ancient Middle Eastern collections, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Amy Miller Dehan

Amy Miller Dehan is the Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Cincinnati Art Museum. She has served the museum since 2001. Dehan was part of the curatorial team that developed The Cincinnati Wing: The Story of Art in the Queen City and has worked on various installations of the museum’s American and European art collections. Her writing on decorative arts and design has appeared in catalogues including Gorham Silver: Designing Brilliance 1850–1970, Cincinnati Silver: 1788–1940; Outside the Ordinary: Contemporary Art Glass; and Cincinnati Art Carved Furniture and Interiors. She has also been published in The Magazine Antiques, Silver Magazine, Gastronomica, and other periodicals. Ms. Dehan has curated multiple exhibitions for the museum, including Cincinnati Silver (2014); The Art of Sound: Four Centuries of Musical Instruments (2012); Going Dutch: Contemporary Design from Local Collections and the Cincinnati Art Museum (2011); Force of Nature: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Horvitz Collection (2010); and Outside the Ordinary: Contemporary Art in Glass, Wood and Ceramics from the Wolf Collection (2009).  Ms. Dehan earned her B.A. from the College of William and Mary and her M.A. from the University of South Carolina. She is an alumnus of The Winterthur Fall Institute and the Attingham Summer School. She held internships and fellowships at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has worked in the field of decorative arts for twenty-five years.

Kristin Spangenberg

Kristin Spangenberg serves as Curator of Prints at the Cincinnati Art Museum. She has more than 40 years of experience in her field, having previously served as Assistant Curator of Prints at the Cincinnati Art Museum and Assistant Curator of Graphic Arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Ms. Spangenberg earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Davis, and a master’s degree from the University of Michigan. She also served an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Print & Photograph Department and has participated in various seminars. She is a member of the Print Council of America and the Circus Historical Society. Ms. Spangenberg has lectured on many topics, including recent lectures on Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, and Frank Duveneck. She has also written catalogues for many of the museum’s exhibitions on prints, drawings and photographs. Most recently she has contributed to and edited The Amazing American Circus Poster: The Strobridge Lithographing Company (2011).

Dr. Nathaniel M. Stein

Dr. Nathaniel M. Stein, Curator of Photography, joined the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2017. Stein holds degrees in art history from Wesleyan University and Brown University, where his doctoral research focused on the history of photography in India. He has organized exhibitions of historical and contemporary photography—including presentations in Cincinnati of the works of David Hartt and John Edmonds, Sohrab Hura, Gillian Wearing, the Kamoinge Workshop, and Hank Willis Thomas—and led the formation of the museum’s Nancy Rexroth Collection. Selected publications include The Natural World (2022), The Levee: A Photographer in the American South (2020), and Interference: Andre Bradley and Paul Anthony Smith (2017), as well as contributions to Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: A Black Futures Series Photo Archive (2022) and Beyond Bollywood: 2000 Years of Dance in the Arts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan Region (2022). Prior to arriving in Cincinnati, Stein held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the RISD Museum. He has taught the history of photography, held fellowships, and lectured at institutions in Europe and the United States, and serves on the ArtsWave Pride Steering Committee.

Dr. Hou-mei Sung

Dr. Hou-mei Sung has served as the curator of East Asian Art at the Cincinnati Art Museum since 2002. Dr. Sung received a B.A. in foreign languages and literature and an M.A. in Chinese history, both from the National Taiwan University. She also earned a Ph.D. in museum studies from Case Western Reserve University. Prior to coming to Cincinnati, Dr. Sung served as research associate at the Cleveland Museum of Art and a variety of research and teaching positions in museum and academic fields in Asia and throughout the United States, including the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan; John Carroll University; Colorado College; Cleveland State University; and Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Sung has organized over ten special exhibitions, including Galloping through Dynasties, Dressed to Kill: Japanese Arms and Armor and Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China. She has nearly sixty publications, including her recent books Decoded Messages: The Symbolic Language of Chinese Animal Painting and Masterpieces of Japanese Art at the Cincinnati Art Museum.