BALTIMORE, MD.- The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) today announced two significant fellowship appointments, to support research, explore exhibition and publication subjects, and imagine new curatorial frameworks. Dr. Rhea L. Combs will take the role of Senior Fellow in Contemporary and Global Art, an independent two-year fellowship at the museum, and Dr. Ellen McBreen will serve as the second Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies Fellow. The two positions reflect the BMA’s commitment to new scholarship within the field and to offering curators and scholars unrestricted opportunities to pursue new ideas and approaches that enhance our understanding and connections to art.

Combs is an award-winning curator has dedicated her career to exploring how visual culture can shape our shared history. She has more than two decades of curatorial and museum experience, most recently as the Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (2021-2026). Previously, Combs was the Senior Curator of Photography and Film and the founding director of the Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

McBreen has written and presented extensively on Matisse and her research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century art, design, and visual culture in Europe as well as 20th-century art in the U.S. She is professor of History of Art at Wheaton College, Massachusetts, where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary art. She also recently served as the Director of the Wheaton Institute for the Interdisciplinary Humanities (2022-2024).

“We are thrilled to welcome Rhea and Ellen as fellows at the BMA, as part of our vision to support new expansive scholarship in the histories of art and to create the space necessary to envision the future of museum work,” said Asma Naeem, the museum’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “The BMA has long been committed to innovation, experimentation, and to upending convention in service to our communities. Providing these fellowships extends those institutional priorities and reflects our deep interest in advancing critical conversations through different collaborations and methodologies. I look forward to the rich dialogues and opportunities that emerge through these fellowships, and to learning from Rhea and Ellen as brilliant scholars.”