BROOKLYN, NY.- Richard Aste, an art historian with broad experience working with European painting, sculpture, and works on paper, has been appointed Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Currently Associate Curator at Museo de Arte de Ponce in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Aste has worked with that museum’s important collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French paintings and sculptures while organizing several European-based exhibitions there.

Prior to the position in Ponce, Aste was a specialist at Christie’s in Old Master Paintings and Old Master Drawings, and he has held positions at Wildenstein & Co., Inc., and Robert Simon Fine Art, Inc.

During his tenure at Museo de Arte de Ponce, Aste was curator of Masterpieces of Spanish Painting from the Prado and The Journey to Impressionism, and co-curator of The Age of Rodin and Masterpieces of European Painting from Museo de Arte de Ponce. He is currently working on the reinstallation of thirteen permanent collection galleries.

Aste received Master’s degrees from Hunter College and CUNY Graduate School and University Center, where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate. His graduate work focused on the Italian Renaissance and included two years in Florence researching Michelangelo, after which he lectured at Hunter College for several years.

The Brooklyn Museum’s European art collection includes Old Master and modern paintings by such artists as Nardo di Cione, Davide Ghirlandaio, Frans Hals, Francisco de Goya, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, as well as sculptures that include an important collection of works by Auguste Rodin.

Born in Lima, Peru, Aste lived in New York City for a decade—three of those years in Brooklyn—before relocating to Puerto Rico.