FORT WORTH, TX.- The Kimbell Art Museum announced today the appointment of Emerson Bowyer as chief curator. An expert in British and French art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Bowyer was most recently the Searle Curator and Curator, Painting and Sculpture, Jeffrey and Carol Horvitz Collection, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Prior to that, he worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and The Frick Collection. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, Bowyer studied art history and law at the University of Sydney and art history at Columbia University. He begins his position at the Kimbell today.

“On behalf of the Kimbell Art Foundation, I am pleased to welcome Emerson Bowyer to the Kimbell’s curatorial team,” said Eric Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “Emerson brings a strong history of organizing ambitious and timely exhibitions based on rigorous scholarship, along with a reputation as an engaging colleague and thoughtful leader. I am confident that he will contribute meaningfully to the Kimbell’s collection, programming, and professional staff.”

Bowyer’s major exhibitions have focused on sculpture and include Camille Claudel (2023–24, Art Institute of Chicago and the Getty) with Anne-Lise Desmas, the catalogue for which received the 2025 College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award; Canova: Sketching in Clay (2023–24, Art Institute of Chicago and National Gallery of Art) with C.D. Dickerson; Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (2017, Met Breuer) with Brinda Kumar, Luke Syson, and Sheena Wagstaff; and David d’Angers: Making the Modern Monument (2013, The Frick Collection). He is currently organizing Vilhelm Hammershøi: Pictures from Home (2027–28, Art Institute of Chicago and The Frick Collection), highlighting the masterworks of the Danish turn-of-the-century painter.

Bowyer was responsible for a number of important additions to the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Most significantly, he led the acquisitions of William Holman Hunt’s seminal Pre-Raphaelite painting The Shadow of Death; French sculptor Camille Claudel’s unique painted portrait bust of her brother Paul; and Danish master Vilhelm Hammershøi’s early-twentieth-century masterpiece The Music Room, Strandgade 30. He was part of the team that brought the most significant private collection of French art from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries in the United States, the Horvitz Collection, to the Art Institute.

“I look forward to my move to Fort Worth and am deeply honored to be appointed chief curator at the Kimbell Art Museum,” said Bowyer. “I’ve long admired its unique and renowned collection of masterpieces, as well as its commitment to excellence in research, exhibitions, and conservation. I’m excited to play a role in continuing that venerable tradition and to join the vibrant arts community in North Texas.”