Lara Yeager-Crasselt
Curator and Department Head, European Painting and Sculpture
Curatorial
Lara Yeager-Crasselt (she/her) is Curator and Department Head of European Painting and Sculpture at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Since joining the BMA in September 2022, she has begun a major research initiative centered on the BMA’s collection of European Art produced between 1400 and 1800. This project will help guide the forthcoming reinstallation of the European galleries in the BMA’s Jacobs Wing.
A scholar of early modern European art, Dr. Yeager-Crasselt specializes in painting, sculpture, and tapestry produced in Northern Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. She earned her PhD in art history from the University of Maryland and her BA from Vassar College. Her research focuses on the dynamics of artistic exchange between the Low Countries and Italy, as well as broader issues of artistic mobility, identity, and collaboration in the early modern period. Dr. Yeager-Crasselt is the author of Michael Sweerts (1618-1664): Shaping the Artist and Academy in Rome and Brussels, published by Brepols in 2016, in addition to articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Annales d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie, De Zeventiende Eeuw, and Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies. She regularly contributes to exhibition catalogues and has co-authored and co-edited various exhibition publications.
Before coming to the BMA, Dr. Yeager-Crasselt served as Curator of The Leiden Collection in New York, and Co-Editor of The Leiden Collection Online Catalogue. There, she oversaw the collection’s research, loans, and exhibitions at home and abroad, including the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and Louvre Abu Dhabi. Closer to home, she developed the collection’s focus exhibitions, including Exchanging Words: Women and Letters in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting at the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego.
Previously, Dr. Yeager-Crasselt held positions at the Clark Art Institute, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and KU Leuven as a Belgian American Educational Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow. She greatly enjoys teaching and recently served as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art History at Vassar College.