Art Department Staff

The professional curators who oversee the Boston Athenæum’s art collection assist scholars and members with research on objects in the collection and on the artists who created them, organize exhibitions of objects selected from the collection or borrowed from other institutions, and direct conservation of objects from the collection as required.

DAVID B. DEARINGER, Ph.D., Susan Morse Hilles Curator of Paintings & Sculpture and Director of the Art Department, is an art historian and curator with a specialty in nineteenth-century American art. He holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Before he came to the Athenæum in 2004, he was a member of the curatorial staff of the National Academy of Design in New York where he served as Chief Curator. He has also been on the adjunct faculty of the State University of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in New York since 1989; he teaches courses in American art and museum studies, among others. Among his publications are Albert Wein, An American Modernist (2008), Acquired Tastes: 200 Years of Collecting for the Boston Athenæum (2006), Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design (2004), Challenging Tradition: Women Artists and the Academy (2003), and Rave Reviews: American Art and Its Critics, 1826-1925 (2000). He has received fellowships from the Henry Luce Foundation, the City University of New York (where he was a University Fellow), and the Lucelia Foundation. In 2002, he was the Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida. He lives in Boston and New York. (dearinger@bostonathenaeum.org)

HINA HIRAYAMA, Ph.D., Associate Curator of Paintings & Sculpture, is an art historian and curator with a specialty in American art and Boston's cultural history of the nineteenth century. She received a B.A. from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in American and New England Studies from Boston University. She has worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Boston Athenæum, where she has been a member of the Art Department since 1995. She has curated and organized a number of exhibitions and contributed to many publications including A Pleasing Novelty: Bunkio Matsuki and the Japan Craze in Victorian Salem (1993), Look Again: Essays on the Boston Athenæum's Art Collections (2003), Acquired Tastes: 200 Years of Collecting for the Boston Athenæum (2006), and The Boston Athenæum: Bicentennial Essays (2009). (hirayama@bostonathenaeum.org)

CATHARINA SLAUTTERBACK, Curator of Prints & Photographs, holds B.A. and M.L.S. degrees from the University of Wisconsin where she specialized in the study of comparative literature and special collections. She has worked as an editor for the Gale Research Company and was on the staff of the Yale Center for British Art. In 1990, she joined the staff of the Athenæum where she served as Assistant and then Associate Curator of Prints and Photographs. In 2009 she was appointed Curator of Prints and Photographs. She has organized a number of exhibitions at the Athenæum, notably “Designing the Boston Athenæum: 10 ½ at 150” (1999) and “’Always Delightfully Cool’: Summer Vacations in Northern New England, 1825-1900” (2008) for which she produced exhibition catalogues. She has also contributed to a number of other publications including Early American Lithography: Images to 1830 (1997) and Acquired Tastes: 200 Years of Collecting for the Boston Athenæum (2007). (slautterback@bostonathenaeum.org)

PATRICIA BOULOS, Photo Services & Digital Resources, is currently the Digital Assets Librarian and the Photo Services Manager at the Boston Athenæum. She received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and an M.L.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College in Boston. Previously, she worked as the photographic editor, manager, and cataloguer for an international photo journalist. She has been a member of the Athenæum’s staff since 2003. (boulos@bostonathenaeum.org)