Barry Shifman

Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Late 19th and Early 20th Century Decorative Arts at VMFA

Barry Shifman, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Decorative Arts 1890 to the Present, joined the staff of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2007. Previously, he was in charge of the Department of Decorative Arts at the Indianapolis Museum of Art from 1988 to 2006. During the 1980s, Shifman was a curatorial assistant in the Department of Decorative Arts at both the J. Paul Getty Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. While at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, he completed the reinstallation of the collection of Decorative Arts at the museum. Shifman has organized over fifteen exhibitions on subjects as diverse as American Arts & Crafts, Renaissance and Baroque European silver at the Armory Museum (Kremlin), and contemporary glass. He has published over twenty-five scholarly and popular articles, in journals such as Apollo, Revue du Louvre, Burlington, and Antiques, on topics such as Art Nouveau and Art Deco jewelry, 18th- to 19th-century Sèvres porcelain, American Arts & Crafts, and nineteenth-century British furniture. Shifman received his BA in art history from the University of California at Los Angeles and an MA in art history from the University of Chicago. He spent a year of independent study in Paris and six months at the Victoria and Albert Museum Study Centre in London. At present, Shifman is organizing a major traveling exhibition on Paris Fashion and Art Deco, 1910 – 1930.