Dr. Catherine L. Futter was appointed director of curatorial affairs at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Arts in January, 2016. Previously, she was the Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward senior curator of European arts and The Helen Jane and R. Hugh “Pat” Uhlmann senior curator of architecture, design, and decorative arts. She has completed several reinstallation projects for the museum as well as a major international loan traveling exhibition, “Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at World’s Fairs, 1851–1939,” 2012, and several contemporary art and design exhibitions, including “The Future of Yesterday: Photographs of Architectural Remains of World’s Fairs,” 2012. Futter specializes in modern and contemporary American and European decorative arts and has focused on the interaction between different cultures and their influence on the decorative arts from the fifteenth century to the present. Futter’s published work includes “Chinoiserie in Northern Italy—Japanned Decoration in a Rare Eighteenth-century Piedmontese Gabinetto in The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,” in Furniture History, 2010. She has also co-edited several exhibition catalogues. Futter has a PhD and MA in the history of art from Yale University, and a BA in Medieval and Renaissance studies from Duke University.
