CINCINNATI, OH.- The Cincinnati Art Museum has named David E. (Ned) Lazaro the inaugural Mary W. Baskett Curator of Fashion Arts and Textiles. Lazaro will be responsible for the stewardship, growth, development and programmatic initiatives of the museum’s fashion and textiles collection. He will begin December 1, 2026.
“We are pleased to welcome Ned Lazaro to Cincinnati,” shared Cameron Kitchin, Louis and Louise Dieterle Nippert Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. “His leadership and voice in fashion and textile studies will benefit our entire community, building on generational commitments at the Cincinnati Art Museum. We look forward to Ned’s contributions and collaborative scholarship at CAM."
Lazaro joins CAM from The Wadsworth (Hartford, Connecticut) where he oversaw the museum’s global costume and textile collection of more than 10,000 works, ranging in date from ancient to contemporary as the Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles. Specific responsibilities included, among others, conducting, presenting and publishing original research; planning large-scale exhibitions and gallery installations; cataloging and assessing collection objects; and identifying conservation priorities.
Prior to The Wadsworth, Lazaro was Curator of Textiles at Historic Deerfield, Inc. (Deerfield, MA), where he was responsible for the acquisition, research, interpretation, publication and display of more than 8,000 objects, mostly from the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Among Lazaro’s juried publications are “Wearing Balenciaga: Two Connecticut Clients,” Second International Congress Proceedings, Cristbal Balenciaga Foundation, Getria, Spain (forthcoming); “Getting the Sack: The Controversial Late 1950s Fashion.” COSTUME [The Journal of the Costume Society UK] 58 (2024): 226–254; and book review, Christian Dior: History and Modernity, 1947–1957, in DRESS 45 (2019): 197–199. He is an accomplished lecturer and the English language copy editor for Bulletin du CIETA.
Lazaro received his Master’s degree in fashion and textile history from the University of Massachusetts in 2001. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts in 1994.
CAM has approximately 15,000 works in its fashion arts and textiles collection, including dress, accessories and fiber arts from around the world.
In 2025, Mrs. Baskett planned a $5 million gift to support CAM’s fashion arts and textiles collection. This gift led to the opening of the museum’s first gallery dedicated to the display and interpretation of fashion and textiles in August 2026 and to the endowment of the curator of fashion arts and textiles position. In addition, Mrs. Baskett’s collection of fashion from Japan–featuring pieces by designers Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, among others—and her compilation of art history research accompany the gift.
Mrs. Baskett was the curator of prints at CAM from 1965 until 1971 and was a specialist in both Western and Japanese prints and a published author on the graphic arts. While at the museum, she was instrumental in building one of the world’s finest collections of 20th-century Japanese prints. Her commitment to Japanese fashion was recognized with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Tokyo Commendation Award in 2010 for her "contributions to cultural exchange in the field of art." Mrs. Baskett was the owner of Mary W. Baskett Gallery in Mount Adams and was also an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati.
Mrs. Baskett passed away at the age of 85 on July 15, 2026.
