Release Date: April 2, 2015

C.D. Dickerson III to Become Curator and Head of Sculpture Department at National Gallery of Art, Washington, Starting July 27, 2015

C.D. Dickerson, curator and head of sculpture and decorative arts, National Gallery of Art

Washington, DC—Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, Washington, announced that C.D. Dickerson III, curator of European art at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, since 2009, will become the Gallery’s new curator and head of sculpture and decorative arts beginning July 27, 2015. Dickerson will oversee a collection of some 3,526 works of European and American sculpture, decorative arts, and medals, along with the associated exhibition program.

"We look forward to welcoming C.D. back to the Gallery, where he was a graduate curatorial intern in 2004‒2005 and an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow at our Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts—CASVA—in 2014," said Powell. "He has a great familiarity with our collection and brings fresh insights to exhibitions, acquisitions, and presentation of the art."

Dickerson became the Kimbell’s curator of European art two years after he arrived there in 2007 as associate curator. While at the Kimbell he co-curated and contributed to catalogs for, among other exhibitions, Bernini: Sculpting in Clay in 2012‒2013, From the Private Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern in 2010‒2011, and A Nativity from Naples: Presepe Sculpture of the Eighteenth Century in 2008‒2009. From 2006 to 2007, he was assistant curator of Renaissance and baroque art at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Bernini: Sculpting in Clay was seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Kimbell. Art critic Souren Melikian wrote in the New York Times, "The exhibition inspired by the work of the three scholars and, most importantly, the book that tells their story break entirely new ground." Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News wrote, "This first-ever comprehensive show of these models is a triumph for Kimbell curator C.D. Dickerson."

Dickerson received his AB diploma summa cum laude from Princeton University and MA from Washington University in Saint Louis. In 2006 he earned his PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), New York University, where his dissertation topic was "Bernini and Before: Modeled Sculpture in Rome, c. 1600‒25." He was advised by IFA professor and baroque scholar Donald Posner, who died in 2005, and renowned art historian Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery, London, and former head of sculpture and decorative arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Dickerson also took courses in law and nonprofit and curatorial leadership at various universities.

Dickerson has lectured widely, written for numerous scholarly publications, and contributed to a number of books and exhibition catalogs. He has served on the board of Save Venice Inc. since 2014 and has been actively involved in the Renaissance Society of America and the Association of Art Museum Curators.