CHICAGO, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago announces the appointment of Rebecca Long as the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Associate Curator in the Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture. She will be responsible for Italian and Spanish painting and sculpture before 1750.

A specialist in the art of 16th- and 17th-century Spain and Italy, Long is currently Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1800 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. There she spearheaded work on the forthcoming catalogue of the museum’s Clowes Collection, offering the first scholarly and technical analysis of that important collection of masterworks of the Italian, Spanish, Netherlandish and German schools. She will assume her Art Institute duties on Feb. 27, 2015.

“We are delighted to welcome Rebecca to the Art Institute,” said Sylvain Bellenger, Searle Chair and Curator, Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture. “She is not just a scholar; she enjoys sharing her knowledge and passion to reveal the freshness in a work of art and to enlighten our diverse audiences, one of the museum’s key missions. Every Old Master was once a contemporary artist. Rebecca approaches the art of the Italian Renaissance with the aim of awakening for us the energy and immediacy the works held for the patrons and creators of their time.”

Long will be receiving her Ph.D. from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in early 2015, with a dissertation on Bartolomé Carducho and the role of Italian artists in the Spanish court during the Renaissance. She received her M.A. in art history and archaeology from New York University and her B.A. (magna cum laude), in the history of art and architecture as well as business administration, from the University of Pittsburgh. She has been awarded multiple prestigious fellowships, including those at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Villa La Pietra in Florence, and, most recently, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti, also in Florence. Long has actively presented her research at such venues as the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts and the annual conferences of the College Art Association, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Sixteenth Century Society. Forthcoming publications include the Catalogue of the Clowes Collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and essays in After Trent: Rethinking Art around 1600 and Sobre Vicente Carducho: Diálogos de la Pintura.

“I am thrilled to be joining the Art Institute,” said Long. “For a curator, the opportunity to work in a museum environment that combines a strong commitment to scholarship with an equal commitment to engaging visitors is a dream come true. I look forward to getting to work.”