TORONTO.- The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has hired Lloyd DeWitt as its new Curator, European Art. DeWitt, an Ontario native, joins the AGO’s curatorial team on June 6.

Currently the Associate Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, DeWitt will oversee the European department and its collection, program exhibitions, elevate the Gallery’s presentation of its holdings for local and international audiences, and work with colleagues to develop synergies between collecting areas across the institution.

“Lloyd will work with the Gallery’s most prized collections of old master paintings and sculpture,” explained Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO’s Michael and Sonja Koerner director, and CEO. “He is ideally suited to advance our commitment to presenting art in dynamic new ways.”

DeWitt is an art historian, author, and educator specializing in northern Baroque and northern Renaissance Art. Educated in Fine Arts at the University of Guelph and Art History at the University of Massachusetts, he also possesses a PhD in Art History from the University of Maryland. Prior to serving eight years at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, DeWitt was a visiting professor at Ursinus College, the Price Fellow at Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia and lectured at La Salle University. Most recently he has been visiting lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.

“We are extremely excited to have Lloyd on board,” said Elizabeth Smith, the AGO’s executive director, Curatorial Affairs. “He will bring a deep expertise in the European field and fresh perspectives on ways to substantially engage our public’s interest in European Art and its presence at the AGO.”

During his tenure at Philadelphia Museum of Art, projects included Jacob van Ruisdael, Master of Landscape, Jan Lievens 1607-1674, a collaboration with the National Gallery of Art, David Teniers’s “Theatrum Pictorium”, Hans Memling and the Early Netherlandish Tondo, and Willem Kalf and the Sumptuous Still Life in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art. DeWitt’s exhibition Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, co-organized with the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Musée du Louvre, will open this April in Paris.

“I'm thrilled to be joining the AGO at this exciting time in its history,” said DeWitt. “The breadth and quality of the European collection, the astonishing Thomson gift, and masterpieces by Bernini, Rubens, Hals and Rembrandt really set Toronto apart.”

DeWitt has contributed to numerous catalogues and earned the 2008 University of Pennsylvania, Penn Humanities Forum Regional Fellowship; a National Endowment for the Humanities 2007 Exhibitions Planning Grant for Fortune and Folly: Images of Alchemy in Northern European Art, in collaboration with the Chemical Heritage Foundation; and a 2003 Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Fellowship in History of Art.

Working alongside DeWitt is Alexandra (Sasha) Suda, Assistant Curator of European Art. Suda, who started at the Gallery on February 28, is a former Torontonian, and most recently served as Andrew Mellon Research Fellow in the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to her specialty as a medievalist, Suda is currently completing her doctorate at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

“Together, Lloyd and Sasha will make a great team,” said Smith. “Their significant and complementary expertise will make a mark for the AGO.”

The AGO’s European collection comprises some 3,500 works with strengths in areas dedicated to 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting, 17th-century Italian Baroque works, 19th-century French Impressionism and key works from the early 20th century.