The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art announces Erin Monroe will serve as Krieble Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture. Monroe has served in the American art department at the Wadsworth Atheneum in various capacities since 2007, most recently in the role of associate curator.

“It is beyond exciting to me to be an ambassador to this astounding collection of American art,” said Monroe. “At a time when there are incredible changes underway in the field of American art, I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues at the Wadsworth to propel a more inclusive, more diverse view of history through art.”

“In Erin’s 15 years with the Wadsworth she has developed a deep understanding of our renowned American collection, and the stories they tell,” said Jeffrey Brown, CEO and Interim Director at the Wadsworth. “She has a masterful way of translating her scholarship in humanistic terms and insightfully putting it into a broader context.”

Monroe’s curatorial practices include exploring the artistic process and displaying fine art with examples of material culture to contextualize and enrich historic objects. Her efforts are currently focused on rethinking the museum’s American galleries. Through cross-departmental collaborations, partnerships, and collections development she is leading the exploration of ways to develop narratives that expand the stories told by and about American art and culture. 

Monroe is responsible for an extensive collection that encompasses colonial portraiture, Hudson River School landscapes, neoclassical sculpture, American modernism, and works on paper. She has contributed to major traveling exhibitions and catalogues such as: American Moderns on Paper: Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (2010); Patti Smith: Camera Solo (2010); and Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008 (2014). She was the sole curator of Andrew Wyeth: Looking Beyond (2012), Gorey’s Worlds (2018), Paul Manship: Ancient Made Modern (2021); and Milton Avery: The Connecticut Years (2021). She contributed major essays to and edited the corresponding catalogues for Andrew Wyeth: Looking Beyond (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art) and Gorey’s Worlds (Princeton University Press).

Prior to the Wadsworth Atheneum, she worked at the Lewis Walpole Library, a department of Yale University Library, helping digitize their renowned print collection and conduct original research for the traveling exhibition Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill (2010). Monroe obtained a B.A. in art history from Northwestern University and a Master’s degree from Hunter College (CUNY), with a concentration in modern American art.