DALLAS, TX.- Today the Eugene McDermott Director of the
Dallas Museum of Art Dr. Agustín Arteaga announced that Anne R. Bromberg, PhD, The Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Ancient and Asian Art, has been named Curator Emerita in great appreciation of her nearly 60 years of Museum work, and her renowned curatorial expertise in the field.
Dr. Bromberg has been with the DMA since she began in 1962 as a lecturer. In 1975 she was appointed head of the education department. Since 1989 she has been a curator at the DMA and has played a key role in developing the Museum’s significant Asian holdings. In 2004 Dr. Bromberg was named The Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Ancient and Asian Art, reflecting the dedication of the Greens, whose generosity added many objects to the DMA’s collection, especially in the area of Western antiquities.
Said Arteaga, “In a remarkable career, Anne Bromberg has worked at the Dallas Museum of Art longer than any current staff member, for seven Museum directors, in two locations, and for nearly 60 years. She is much beloved, widely admired, and wickedly smart, and it is my immense pleasure and a distinct honor to celebrate and commemorate Anne’s many accomplishments and her undeniably committed service by conferring this title on her. The DMA has been fortunate for six decades to have Anne call us ‘home,’ and we applaud this rare achievement.”
As the curator of approximately 40 DMA special exhibitions, she most notably served as the Dallas curator for four of the 10 highest attended paid special exhibitions in Museum history, two of which rank at #1 and #2: Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs (2008) and Splendors of China's Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong (2004). The other two are Searching for Ancient Egypt: Art, Architecture, and Artifacts from the University of Pennsylvania Museum (1997) and Pompeii A.D. 79 (1979).
Other presentations organized during Dr. Bromberg’s tenure include Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt (2016), The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum (2013), Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting (2007), and The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India (2003). She has also curated numerous exhibitions based on the Museum’s collection, such as Face to Face: International Art at the DMA (2011) and All the World’s a Stage: Celebrating Performance in the Visual Arts (2009).
Most recently, Dr. Bromberg was the curator for the 2019 exhibition The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige’s suite of 55 prints from 1834. The complete series—once owned by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and gifted to the Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Marcus in 1984—was on view at the DMA for the first time in more than 30 years.
Dr. Bromberg has contributed to many publications related to the Museum’s collection, including Ancient Gold Jewelry at the Dallas Museum of Art (1996), written by Barbara Deppert-Lippitz; Gods, Men, and Heroes: Ancient Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (1996), co-written with Karl Kilinski II; Dallas Museum of Art: Selected Works (1983); and A Guide to the Collections: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (1979). She also worked on the first publication dedicated to exploring the Museum’s collection of over 450 works of South and Southeast Asian art, The Arts of India, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas at the Dallas Museum of Art (2013). Currently, she is researching the Museum’s collection for a forthcoming publication on its works of Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese art.
Dr. Bromberg earned her BA in Anthropology from Harvard University. She also earned her MA and PhD in Classical Art and Archeology from Harvard University. She has taught several courses on ancient art at Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Arlington. In 2009 she received the Dallas Historical Society Award for Excellence in Community Service in the field of education.
