Joaneath Spicer
The James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art, The Walters Art Museum
Joaneath Spicer received her B.A. from Smith College and Ph.D. from Yale University in 1979. After teaching at the University of Toronto, she came to the Walters in 1990. Her publications have addressed such wide-ranging subjects as Netherlandish drawing (in Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the National Gallery of Canada, 2004), art and science at the court of Rudolf II in Prague, and the role of the visitor in 17th-century art collections and in modern exhibitions. In addition, Spicer has written about body language, the collecting of bronzes in the Renaissance, and Italian painting, including Masterpieces of Italian Painting in the Walters Art Museum, 2005 with Morten Hansen. She has been responsible for several exhibitions and catalogues at the Walters including The Allure of Bronze (1995), Going for Baroque (1995, co-curator with Lisa Corrin), Bernardo Strozzi (1995), and Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht in the Golden Age (1997–1998). From 1998 to 2005, Spicer was engaged in re-installing the Renaissance and Baroque collections, including the acclaimed sequence of rooms recreating a 17th-century Chamber of Wonders. She is now working on a publication of the Walters’ Chamber of Wonders and exhibitions on the African presence in Renaissance Europe and the Walters’ Ideal City painting.