RICHMOND, VA.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) announced today the appointment of Lisa Brody, Ph.D., as its new Jack and Mary Ann Frable Curator of Ancient Art, following an international search. She began her work at VMFA on November 10, 2025.

Dr. Brody, formerly Associate Curator of Ancient Art at the Yale University Art Gallery, brings extensive experience in curating and scholarship to her new role. During her 18-year tenure at Yale, Dr. Brody managed a collection of approximately 20,000 works spanning ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Roman and Byzantine art.

“I’m delighted that Lisa is joining the curatorial team during this transformative time at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,” said Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. “As the museum’s new Jack and Mary Ann Frable Curator of Ancient Art, she will oversee the display, stewardship and study of the museum’s renowned collection of ancient art, ensuring that these important works of art are shared with our visitors in new and compelling ways.”

Dr. Brody will be responsible for VMFA’s collection of more than 1,500 works of ancient art, which spans more than 5,000 years of human history. Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman art are the mainstays of VMFA’s ancient art collection, which also contains major works from the civilizations of Western Asia and Nubia. Objects include sculpture in bronze, marble and wood, as well as mosaics, paintings, pottery and jewelry. One of Dr. Brody’s priorities will be to review the collection and work with Karen Daly, VMFA’s Senior Manager of Provenance Research, to share provenance information with the public.

“I am thrilled to welcome Lisa as the museum’s Jack and Mary Ann Frable Curator of Ancient Art,” said Artistic Director and Chief Curator Dr. Michael Taylor. “Lisa’s experience in several key areas –– acquisitions, exhibitions, provenance research and scholarly publishing –– make her an exceptional choice for this endowed curatorial position. Our outstanding collection of ancient art is in great hands with Lisa, and I look forward to seeing the acquisitions, exhibitions and permanent collection displays she makes at VMFA.”

An expert in Roman archaeology, Dr. Brody curated the inaugural exhibition in the Mary and James Ottaway Gallery of Ancient Dura-Europos at Yale. Initially, she featured the site’s extraordinary preservation as a window into the ancient world. Later, in a complete reinstallation, she highlighted the site’s major works of art and its artistic and cultural ties to the ancient city of Palmyra, in present-day Syria. She also created traveling exhibitions featuring works from Yale’s permanent collection and managed art loans for national and international institutions, making the collection more accessible to the public.

Dr. Brody organized and wrote the accompanying catalogue for the traveling exhibition Figures from the Fire: Ancient Bronzes from the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum, which appeared at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Maine from March 2023 to January 2024, and at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Connecticut from July to November 2024. Her other traveling exhibitions, developed with co-curator Gail Hoffman, include Roman in the Provinces: Art on the Periphery of Empire (2014–2015) and Dura-Europos: Crossroads of Antiquity, which also appeared under the title Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos (2011–2012).

For the past five years, Dr. Brody has served as the book reviews editor for the American Journal of Archaeology, fostering communication with an international network of publishers, authors and reviewers. She also regularly contributes to scholarly journals.

Her essay in Stories of Syria’s Textiles: Art and Heritage across Two Millennia (2023) discussed the ancient textiles discovered at Dura-Europos during excavations by Yale University. Also in 2023, “Morgan’s Ancient Bronzes: The Greek Warrior at the Wadsworth Atheneum” appeared in Morgan: The Collector — Essays in Honor of Linda Roth’s 40th Anniversary at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. “The Mosaics from the 1928–1929 Campaigns of the Joint British-American Expedition to Gerasa: Drawings by Grace and Dorothy Crowfoot,” co-authored with Rubina Raja, was published in Shaping Archaeological Archives (2023); and “Establishing the Baltic Origins of Archaeological Amber Beads from Dura-Europos (Syria) Using Non-destructive DRIFTS,” co-authored with E. Elora H. Kuhn, Minjoo Choi, Elizabeth Wuellner and Ellery Frahm, ran in the Journal of Archaeological Science (2023).

Dr. Brody has lectured and served as a panelist at several conferences. The proceedings of a 2022 international conference she organized on Dura-Europos, co-edited with Anne Chen, were recently published by Brepols in Studies in Classical Archaeology (2025). Previously, Dr. Brody has also spoken at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America; the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Overseas Research; the Roman Archaeology Conference; the Palmyra and the East Symposium, co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Palmyra Portrait Project; and the Classical Association of the Atlantic States Annual Meeting.

Dr. Brody received her Ph.D. in classical art and archaeology and her M.A. in Greek and Roman art and archaeology with minors in Greek history and Islamic art from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She received her B.A., summa cum laude, in archaeological studies from Yale University. She was also a member of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece.

“I am delighted to be joining the dedicated team at VMFA and am honored by the opportunity to oversee the museum’s distinguished collection of ancient art,” said Dr. Brody. “I look forward to exploring innovative ways of interpreting and presenting this collection that will captivate and engage the museum’s visitors. I am excited to work with my new colleagues to create original exhibitions and programs that will highlight the connections among ancient Mediterranean cultures as reflected by their extraordinary works of art.”