Meet The New Director Of The Gardner Museum

Peggy Fogelman, who oversees art exhibitions and collections at New York City’s Morgan Library & Museum, has been named the new director of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

She’ll succeed Anne Hawley, who in February announced plans to step down after 26 years leading the museum. Fogelman is expected to assume the directorship on Jan. 11, 2016.

"I’ve dedicated my entire career to the intersection of art and people, and that’s what I really care about and that’s what museums are all about," Fogelman, who'll be the Gardner's fifth director, told WBUR's Andrea Shea in a phone interview.

The Gardner and Morgan Library have similar institutional histories, having both begun as personal, private collections that evolved into jewel box public museums.

Since 2013, Fogelman has been director of collections at the Morgan, where she oversees the museum’s exhibition program, as well as its curatorial and conservation departments. Earlier this year, Fogelman served for 12 months as the Morgan’s acting director as the museum searched for new director. Last spring, that job went to Colin Bailey, who had been director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and was a longtime chief curator at New York’s Frick Collection.

Fogelman previously was chair of education at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, director of education and interpretation at Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum, associate curator of European sculpture and later assistant director and head of education and interpretive programs at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.