October 22, 2024

MINNEAPOLIS – Dr. Max Bryant joined Mia in 2024 as the James Ford Bell Associate Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture. Before arriving at Mia, he was a research fellow at the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture in the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art at the University of Cambridge. Highlights from his exhibitions and curatorial work include “Strange Impressions: Mannerist Prints from the Rokeby Collection” at the Armagh Robinson Library, Northern Ireland, “The British Galleries” (permanent collection reinstallation) and “The Public Image of Queen Victoria” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and “The First University Library” at the University of Cambridge.

Bryant is a specialist in 18th-century and 19th-century European art & architecture, with a PhD from the University of Cambridge in sculpture and architecture in Victorian Britain. He worked for three years in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a core member of the curatorial team, reinstalling the museum’s galleries of British art and design. He was a research fellow at Armagh Robinson Library. Bryant has published widely in academic journals and exhibition catalogues, including the Met Bulletin and Met Journal. His book, The Museum by the Park (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2017), about Charles Townley’s collection of antique sculpture at the British Museum, one of the most influential public sculpture collections in late 18th-century Europe, was longlisted for the Berger Prize.

The Department of European Art is responsible for a collection comprising nearly 36,000 objects, with works across media, spanning nearly 5,000 years, from antiquity to 1969, and is presented in over 50 galleries.