Rachel McGarry is the Elizabeth MacMillan Chair of European Art and Curator of European Paintings and Works on Paper. Since joining the staff at Mia in 2006, McGarry has organized numerous exhibitions. Most recently, in 2021 she organized the show “Envisioning Evil: ‘The Nazi Drawings’ by Mauricio Lasansky” (2021–22), examining Lasansky’s 1960s series of monumental drawings confronting the Holocaust. The accompanying catalogue considers the shifting understanding of the Holocaust in postwar America and the legacy of Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial in Jerusalem. In 2014 she organized the exhibition “Marks of Genius: 100 Drawings from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,” and oversaw the important publication that accompanied the show. Presently she is co-curating the exhibition “Botticelli and Renaissance Florence: Masterworks from the Uffizi” in partnership with the Uffizi Galleries. Opening fall 2022 at Mia, the show will be one of the most comprehensive shows on Botticelli ever staged in the United States.
McGarry earned an MA and PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art. Her dissertation examined the early career of Guido Reni and his activities in Bologna and Rome. Before coming to Mia, she worked at Christie’s in New York and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an exhibition assistant in Drawings and Prints and research assistant in European Paintings.