Curators in Conversation: Wendy Watson and Emily Wood

Join us for a discussion about collecting and curating 17th century Dutch and Flemish Art with Assistant Curator Emily B. Wood and Mount Holyoke College Art Museum’s first curator Wendy M. Watson. This event celebrates the Museum’s new exhibition Northern Exposure: Painting from the Low Countries in the Permanent Collection, curated by Emily Wood.

Followed by a reception in the Hinchcliff Reception Hall.

This program is made possible by the Louise R. Weiser Memorial Lecture Fund.

Wendy M. Watson served as the first curator of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, where she worked from 1974 until her retirement in 2015. During her tenure, she expanded the Museum’s collection of art from around the globe and organized numerous exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient Roman sculpture and Italian Renaissance decorative arts to Dutch vanitas painting, art conservation, and contemporary prints and photographs. Her distinguished list of publications includes major catalogues on Renaissance ceramics as well as articles and reviews for the British Museum, the Grove Dictionary of Art, and the Renaissance Quarterly. She completed her B.A. in art history from Smith College, graduate work in art history and archeology at Indiana University, and an M.A. in art history from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Emily B. Wood is the Assistant Curator at MHCAM, where she focuses on the general research, interpretation, display, and care of the Museum’s collection, with a speciality on pre-modern art and early modern Europe. She has a BA in art history from Mount Holyoke College, an MPhil in the history of art and architecture from Cambridge University, and an MA in art history from Northwestern University. Her own research focuses on the political uses of sixteenth-century Spanish and Italian art, specifically that of the courts of Philip II of Spain in Madrid and the Medici dukes in Florence.