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 is Curator of European Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum. 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 is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome and has served on vetting committees for several international art fairs. Before coming to Cincinnati in 2017, Bell was a curator in the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In recent years he has mounted exhibitions of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts from the Venetian Renaissance to Belle Époque Paris, on art and diplomacy in post-war Europe and contemporary responses to Rodin; spearheaded the acquisition of British, French, German and Italian paintings and sculpture; and published on Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculpture, the history of collections, and the European landscape tradition.

Amy Miller Dehan

Amy Miller Dehan, Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, joined the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2001. She holds a BA from the College of William and Mary and an MA from the University of South Carolina. Prior to Dehan’s arrival in Cincinnati, she held internships at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is an alum of The Winterthur Fall Institute and the Attingham Summer School. In her present role, Dehan researches, displays, and continues to build the museum’s collections of American and European decorative arts dating from 1400 to the present. She has curated more than 30 exhibitions and museum collection gallery displays on subjects including Cincinnati art, contemporary craft, folk art, American silver, musical instruments, British decorative arts, American Modernism, and contemporary design. In addition to various lectures and journal articles, her most notable publications include Joseph Urban: Unlocking an Art Deco Bedroom (2022), Gorham Silver: Designing Brilliance 1850–1970 (essayist, 2019), Cincinnati Silver: 1788–1940 (2014), Outside the Ordinary: Contemporary Art in Glass, Wood, and Ceramics from the Wolf Collection (2009), and Cincinnati Art Carved Furniture and Interiors (contributor, 2003). Dehan received the Victorian Society of America’s Ruth Emery Publication Award for her scholarship on Cincinnati silver, and most recently earned the Association of Art Museum Curators’ Award for Excellence for the digital exhibition Joseph Urban: Unlocking an Art Deco Bedroom.

Dehan has served on the board of the American Ceramics Circle and currently is President of the Decorative Arts Society, Inc., a New York-based non-profit engaging museum professionals, academics, collectors, dealers, and enthusiasts in the appreciation and study of decorative arts and design from the past to the present. 

Kristin L. Spangenberg

With more than 50 years’ experience in her field, Kristin L. Spangenberg serves as Curator of Prints at the Cincinnati Art Museum. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Davis and was awarded a summer internship (1970) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Print and Photograph Department. Shortly after, Ms. Spangenberg received her master’s degree from the University of Michigan (1971) and was soon hired by the museum and promoted to Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs (1974–2007). She is a member of the Print Council of America, the American Historical Print Collectors Society, the Circus Historical Society, and the Association of Print Scholars. She has lectured on many print topics including recent lectures on Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, and Frank Duveneck. Most recently Ms. Spangenberg has contributed to The Amazing American Circus Poster: The Strobridge Lithography Company (2011) Frank Duveneck: American Master (2020) and authored Illusion and Reality: Prints by Jiŕí Anderle (2009) and George Bellows: American Life in Print (2024).

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.