BOSTON, MASS.- Dr. Nathaniel Silver, 38, was recently named the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection.

For two years as the Museum’s Associate Curator, Silver played a key role in making the collection accessible to the widest possible audience. He contributed to the development of the institution’s recently launched strategic plan, which opens new avenues of public outreach, and supervised content creation for the museum-wide digitization project.

During this time, he curated several critically acclaimed exhibitions. They include the forthcoming Botticelli: Heroines and Heroes (2019) and last year’s Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth, a New York Times Top Ten pick of 2018 and The Boston Globe’s Best Old Master Show in 2018.

He also conceived of the annual program Close Up and inaugurated it with the first installment focusing on Piermatteo D’Amelia’s Annunciation. In his previous role as Assistant Curator, Silver also co-curated and contributed to Beyond Words: Italian Renaissance Books, Off the Wall, and Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice.

In his new position as department head, he will oversee the collections, conservation and archives departments. He will continue to organize exhibitions that make art of the past relevant to the present and which aim to reach a broad public. His forthcoming shows will focus on a previously overlooked folio of drawings by John Singer Sargent, Raphael’s Portrait of Tommasso Inghirami and Titian’s Rape of Europa.

“We are thrilled to appoint Silver to the post of William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection,” said Peggy Fogelman, the Gardner Museum’s Norma Jean Calderwood Director. “He has curated marvelous exhibitions whose depth and vitality appeal to a wide range of audiences and whose scholarship speaks for itself. Silver’s leadership in the Museum’s digitization project has been invaluable, and his role in shaping the strategic plan will insure that our institution’s public initiatives continue to break new ground.”

Before joining the Gardner Museum, Silver worked for three years at The Frick Collection in New York City where his exhibition Piero della Francesca in America earned international recognition. He has served as the Edmond J. Safra Research Associate at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and held fellowships at the Kunsthistoriches Institut in Florence and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice. Silver holds a Ph.D. and an MA from the University of London.