NEW HAVEN, CONN.- The Yale University Art Gallery announced the appointment of Bryan R. Just (B.A. 1995) as the Molly and Walter Bareiss Curator of Ancient Art. Just joins the Gallery from the Princeton University Art Museum, where he was the Peter Jay Sharp, Class of 1952, Curator and Lecturer in the Art of the Ancient Americas, a position he held since 2008. Just assumed his role at the Gallery on October 1.

“Bryan R. Just is an internationally recognized authority on ancient Mesoamerican art, especially Maya art,” said Laurence Kanter, the Gallery’s Chief Curator and Lionel Goldfrank III Curator of European Art. “At Princeton, he was the steward of one of the largest and most significant collections of ancient American art in the country.”

Just commented, “I’m thrilled to join the institution where I began my museum career as an undergraduate bursary student thirty years ago. I am especially looking forward to working alongside my new colleagues in the Department of Ancient Art as we continue to steward and advance knowledge about the Gallery’s extraordinary collections for generations to come.”

Just will oversee the curatorial areas of Ancient Art and Art of the Ancient Americas. The Gallery’s collection of art from the ancient Mediterranean world comprises over 13,000 objects from the Near East, Egypt, Greece, Etruria, and Rome. The collection of art of the ancient Americas explores the richness of works extending from ancient Mesoamerica to the Southern Andes and spanning more than 3,000 years, from the Olmec and Chavin cultures to the Aztec and Inca empires.
About Bryan R. Just

After joining Princeton University Art Museum in 2008, Just cocurated, with William Fitzhugh and Julie Hollowell, the 2009–10 exhibition Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories of Bering Strait, and his 2012 exhibition Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vases of the Ik’ Kingdom was one of five finalists for the Association of Art Museum Curators award for Outstanding Exhibition in a University Museum. In 2015 he oversaw the reopening of the museum’s refurbished ancient Americas galleries. Just’s teaching at Princeton included seminars on Maya and Olmec art as well as introductory lecture courses on the art of Mesoamerica. He chaired Princeton’s NAGPRA committee.

Just received a B.A. in archaeological studies and history of art from Yale University and an M.A. in art history and Ph.D. in art history and linguistics, both from Tulane University. A specialist in ancient Maya art history, his publications include Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vases of the Ik’ Kingdom (2012) and “Printed Pictures of Maya Sculpture,” a contribution to Past Presented: Archaeological Illustration and the Ancient Americas (2012).