DAYTON, OH.- The Dayton Art Institute has announced the appointment of Aimee Marcereau DeGalan as the museum’s Curator of Collections and Exhibitions.

“After a year-long national search, we are pleased to welcome Dr. Marcereau DeGalan as The DAI’s new Curator of Collections and Exhibitions,” says Dayton Art Institute Executive Director Michael R. Roediger. “Many exciting new things are happening at the museum this fall, and Aimee’s addition is a key component in shaping our vision of the DAI as a vibrant destination in Dayton.”

“Aimee brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the museum,” adds Dayton Art Institute Associate Director Jane A. Black. “She is well versed in the acquisition, documentation, care and display of objects, as well as developing, planning, and coordinating exhibitions. She is also an accomplished researcher, writer and lecturer.”

Marcereau DeGalan is a Detroit native. She attended Michigan State University where she earned a bachelor’s degree focusing on Art History, English Literature and Arts Management. She continued her education there, earning a master’s degree in Art History, focusing on Modern European and American painting, sculpture and graphic arts.

After spending six years as the Assistant Curator of European Paintings at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she worked on the landmark portrait exhibition Van Gogh: Face to Face, Marcereau DeGalan worked at the Cleveland Museum of Art during her doctoral study at Case Western Reserve University, where she focused on 18th and 19th century British and French painting, sculpture, and graphic arts. During her seven-year tenure at the Cleveland Museum of Art, she worked in both the departments of Modern European Art and European Painting and Sculpture, where she designed the recent reinstallation of the British galleries, as well as the portrait miniatures installation. In 2008, she accepted her current position at the Fleming Museum of Art at the University of Vermont in Burlington, where she has been the single curator of an encyclopedic collection of nearly 25,000 objects.

Marcereau DeGalan has held several visiting research fellowships at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. She has lectured widely, and published on topics including concepts of beauty and 18th century British portraits, 19th century American and British landscapes, and contemporary American art. Presently, she is at work revising her dissertation, which explores the ways in which discourses on beauty affected the practices of painting portraits and painting faces, and how these practices visually facilitated social mobility, a topic on which she will present at the National Portrait Gallery, London, this fall.

“My roots are in civic institutions in Midwestern cities like Dayton, so in many ways, I feel like I am coming home, and I am genuinely thrilled to be returning to this type of institution,” says Marcereau DeGalan. “I hope to draw on both my civic museum and university museum experience to continue to build and shape the world-class collection that The Dayton Art Institute offers, as well as to present first-rate exhibitions. I am most inspired by the prospect of engaging the Dayton community through art — and the Dayton Art Institute has a wonderfully rich collection with which to work.”

Marcereau DeGalan will join the museum staff in late October.