MILWAUKEE, WIS.- After an extensive national search, the Milwaukee Art Museum announced the appointment of Tanya Paul as the Isabel and Alfred Bader Curator of European Art. Paul will join the Museum in June 2013.

Paul is currently the Ruth G. Hardman Curator of European Art at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a position she has held for nearly four years. Among the exhibitions she has curated for the Philbrook, Scenes from the Low Countries: Dutch and Flemish Prints in the Age of Rembrandt, The Sinuous Line: Jacques Callot and the Rebirth of Printmaking in Early Modern France, and Precious Possessions: The Art of The Portrait Miniature.

The exhibition Elegance and Refinement: The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst, which Paul organized while she was at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, was based on her 2008 dissertation on the Dutch painter. The exhibition later traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and received excellent reviews in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

“Tanya Paul brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this new position at the Museum,” said Brady Roberts, chief curator for the Milwaukee Art Museum. “Her expertise in Dutch still life paintings, as well as her expertise in European printmaking, makes her a tremendous asset as we begin our reinstallation process. I look forward to working with Tanya as we move forward.”

Paul has previously worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the University of Virginia Art Museum (now the Fralin Museum of Art), and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She received her MA and her PhD from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Paul’s position at the Museum as curator of European art is newly funded by Alfred and Isabel Bader, longtime supporters of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Alfred Bader is a renowned collector and dealer of European old master paintings.