Laurence Kanter, the Lionel Goldfrank III Curator of European Art, will assume the additional duties of Chief Curator for the Yale University Art Gallery as of July 1, 2011.

Kanter, who has been with the Gallery since 2002, is recognized across Yale for his teaching skills through his seminars in the History of Art Department. Kanter has distinguished himself at the Gallery through growth of the European collection, including a number of notable reattributions and selected purchases. As Chief Curator, Kanter will serve on the Gallery’s senior management team, work closely with senior curatorial staff, and act as the liaison with the Collections Committee of the Yale University Art Gallery Governing Board. He will continue in his capacity as the Goldfrank Curator and lead the Gallery’s department of European art.

Formerly Curator-in-Charge of the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, he received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 1989. He has authored Italian Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1994) and numerous exhibition catalogues, including Painting in Renaissance Siena, 1420–1500 (1988), Italian Renaissance Frames (1990), Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1300–1450 (1994), The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi (1999), Fra Angelico (2005), and Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection (2010). He has served on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Visiting Committee of the Timken Museum, San Diego; and the Honorary Committee of the American Friends of the Warburg Institute, London. Stepping down from this role is Susan B. Matheson, the Molly and Walter Bareiss Curator of Ancient Art, who has served in the capacity of Chief Curator for the past ten years. In this role, she has been tapped for service across the campus, including as a participant on search committees for the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments and Master of Timothy Dwight College, and as the cochair of the Steering Committee for the Mellon Foundation Collections Collaborative Grant. Matheson will continue to be an active leader at the Gallery and at Yale as she focuses on upcoming exhibition and publication projects.