PRINCETON, NJ.- The Princeton University Art Museum has named Juliana Ochs Dweck to be chief curator, a new role occasioned by the Museum’s continuing growth. Dweck joined the Museum in 2010 and, prior to this appointment, served as the Museum’s Andrew W. Mellon curator of academic engagement. In her new role, effective immediately, she is responsible for providing intellectual and programmatic leadership for the Museum’s curatorial program, including guiding a team of 11 curators as well as curatorial and research assistants and interns. Under the leadership of the Museum’s director, and reporting to the associate director for collections and exhibitions, Dweck is tasked with building a culture of collaboration across diverse areas of curatorial expertise and collections and linking these to the Museum’s educational activities. The creation of this new position and Dweck’s appointment come at a critical time in the Museum’s history, as it prepares for the construction and installation of a dramatically enlarged new facility being designed by Sir David Adjaye.

“Julie brings a remarkable set of talents as a scholar and leader, including a proven ability to work widely across our globe-spanning collections and foster new modes of intellectual inquiry,” said James Steward, Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, director. “Her demonstrated commitment to vital and engaged scholarship, diversity and inclusion will assure that we think in new ways about how an academically based museum can be a leader in the 21st century.”

Dweck received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge and graduated from Yale University with her Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts in cultural anthropology. Before joining Princeton, she served in research and curatorial roles at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Dweck is the author of Security and Suspicion: An Ethnography of Everyday Life in Israel (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); her work on materiality and culture has appeared in Anthropology Now, History and Anthropology, and The Public Historian; and she has received numerous grants and awards for her research.

Among the exhibitions she has curated and co-curated at Princeton are Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States (2019), Time Capsule 1970: Rauschenberg’s Currents (2019), Picturing Protest (2018), and Surfaces Seen and Unseen: African Art at Princeton (2016). In addition, Dweck has provided interpretive leadership for over 50 exhibitions and collections installations spanning the museum’s collections of over 110,000 works of art.

“I am thrilled to take on the role of chief curator at this exciting moment of transformation for the Princeton University Art Museum, and honored by the opportunity to work with extraordinary curators at an institution uniquely positioned to tell expansive stories about art and culture,” said Dweck.