Julia Alexander
Julia Alexander, a distinguished curator and art historian who began her career at Yale and went on to become deputy director for curatorial affairs at the San Diego Museum of Art, the executive director of the Walters Art Museum in Maryland, and the president of the Samuel H Kress Foundation, died on May 4 of a heart attack. She was 57.
Alexander began her career at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), which she joined as assistant curator of paintings and sculpture in 1997, while still completing her dissertation. Her dissertation director, Judith Colton, professor of the history of art, emerita, who became a lifelong friend, remembered Alexander as someone who “loved life and lived it magnificently.”
Alexander became the YCBA’s associate director of programmatic affairs in 2002 and associate director for exhibitions and publications in 2006. Her brilliance, warmth, and dedication shone through from the beginning, colleagues say. During her tenure she helped shape many of the museum’s most celebrated exhibitions and publications, nurtured students with genuine care, and helped shape the museum’s intellectual life.
With her YCBA colleague Malcolm Warner, Alexander co-curated “This Other Eden: British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale,” an exhibition that traveled to three Australian museums in 1998. She played a key role in the full reinstallation of the museum’s collection in 1999. In 2002, she partnered with the National Portrait Gallery in London to co-curate “Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II” with Catharine MacLeod, now senior curator, seventeenth-century collections, at the NPG.
“It was the first big exhibition for both of us,” MacLeod recalled. “We learned so much from the experience and from each other. Her knowledge and judgment transformed the project, and her positivity and practicality overcame all obstacles. We established a deep, lifelong friendship, based on shared interests, kindred spirits, and so much laughter. Her loss to the museum world and to those who loved her is incalculable.”
Alexander helped bring to fruition many important projects during her time at the YCBA, including “Britannia and Muscovy: English Silver at the Court of the Tsars” (2006), “Canaletto in England: A Venetian Artist Abroad, 1746–1755” (2006), “Paul Mellon’s Legacy: A Passion for British Art” (2007), and “Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds” (2007). Her support of these wide-ranging initiatives reflected a deep understanding of the museum’s mission and a rare ability to steward complex projects with insight and care.
Amy Meyers, director of the YCBA from 2002 to 2019, remembered Alexander as a consummate professional. “Exceptionally accomplished, erudite, and collaborative in the loveliest of ways,” Meyers said, “Julia enhanced and energized the culture of the center with her positive spirit. She encouraged the highest standard of scholarship and museum practice in every project that she conceived and stewarded. Julia built national and international partnerships that have had a lasting legacy.”
British art “was only one of the many beneficiaries of Julia’s exuberant advocacy,” said Tim Barringer, the Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
“In the classroom and in the galleries, Julia took joy in inspiring and mentoring generations of young art historians,” he said. “To the permanent benefit of our field, she mobilized formidable resources, personal and institutional, to support emerging scholars and young curators. Her legacy, most visible in her own achievements as a museum director and research leader, also lies in the manifold successes of those she helped and guided.”
Alexander taught numerous courses in the history of art during her tenure at the YCBA, leaving a lasting impact on her students. “I vividly remember her advising the art history majors to work on earlier periods, counsel I very much took to heart!” said Adam Eaker ’07, associate curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a former YCBA student guide. “When I shared my dreams of a curatorial career, she offered candid and frank advice that I have never forgotten.
“As I process this heartbreaking news, I’m struggling to imagine my professional landscape without Julia in it, as an exemplar of everything a museum leader should be,” he said.
Catherine Roach ‘02, an associate professor of art history at Virginia Commonwealth University, remembers having had the fortune of taking Alexander’s undergraduate seminar “Women, Art, and Society.” “Her teaching combined luminous intelligence with a keen sense of humor, an openness to both the profundity and absurdities of the past,” Roach said. “It showed that the history of art was an adventure well worth taking. I use things I learned from her in my own teaching to this day.”
Alexander inspired students and coworkers alike. “Julia was the ultimate connector of people, always encouraging friendships and laughter,” recalled Cassandra Albinson, a former colleague of Alexander’s at YCBA who is now Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of European Art at Harvard Art Museums. “Many arrived in New Haven as students or new Yale employees and were warmly welcomed by Julia into her extended family of friends, associates, and collaborators. One always felt special around Julia — seen, heard, and embraced.”
Alexander left Yale in 2008 to become deputy director for curatorial affairs at the San Diego Museum of Art, where, among other initiatives, she managed a four-year partnership between Balboa Park and the Diamond Neighborhoods communities of San Diego, which resulted in the opening of a community gallery and performing space in 2012. She joined the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in 2013, serving as its fifth executive director — and the first woman to hold the position. At Walters she completed a $30 million endowment campaign and later oversaw the restoration and “rethink” of the museum’s Hackerman House, which holds its collection of Asian art. In the fall of 2024, she was appointed president of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, an organization dedicated to the study and preservation of European art and heritage in the United States.
She recently served as president of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ board of trustees and was actively involved with organizations including the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, Maryland Citizens for the Arts, and the William M. B. Berger Prize for British Art History.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1967 and raised in Claremont, California, Alexander earned her B.A. in art history and French from Wellesley College and her M.A. in French literature from New York University before coming to Yale.
Alexander is survived by her two children, Jack and Beatrice (Bede); her mother, Catharine Alexander; her former husband, Dr. John Marciari; and her sister, Kitty.
“A true institution-builder,” former YCBA director Amy Myers summarized, “Julia was destined to lead the field of art history in important ways, and the Yale Center for British Art was privileged to serve as her testing ground.”
