Olivia Dill. | Photo by Bill Dill, ASC
THE BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART (BMA) announced key staff appointments in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs this week, including Olivia Dill who was named assistant curator. BMA’s collection of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs features more than 68,000 works and spans the 15th century to the present. One of the museum’s most significant areas of collecting, the category represents more than two-thirds of its holdings. Dill is joining the Baltimore Museum of Art from The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, where she is the Moore Curatorial Fellow.
“Dr. Dill impressed everyone with her thoughtful research and clear appreciation for the importance of engaging visitors across multiple platforms. Her prior museum work demonstrates her commitment to expanded cataloging and online information sharing as means to reach audiences both in and outside the museum. Her science background informs her deeply analytical approach to visual art and culture, and she has already made impressive contributions to the field of technical art history,” BMA Curator and Department Head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Leslie Cozzi said in a statement to Culture Type.
“We are extremely delighted to welcome her to the BMA and are very much looking forward to supporting her accomplishments in this new role.”
Since last fall, Dill’s work at the The Morgan Library & Museum has focused on upcoming exhibitions, a survey of the institution’s natural history drawings, and a daylong graduate seminar she co-organized called Drawing Nature, 1500-1900. Previously, Dill was the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Interdisciplinary Fellow, Drawings and Prints, Scientific Research, Paper Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2022-24). She also spent a year at the Art Institute of Chicago as a Chicago Objects Study Initiative Curatorial Intern in the Drawings and Prints Department (2020-21).
Dill recently earned a Ph.D., in art history from Northwestern University (2025). The subject of her dissertation was the work of Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), the German-born entomologist and naturalist who was a scientific illustrator and botanical artist. Dill’s academic background also includes undergraduate degrees in both art history and physics from University of California Berkeley.
“[Olivia Dill’s] science background informs her deeply analytical approach to visual art and culture, and she has already made impressive contributions to the field of technical art history.”
— Leslie Cozzi, BMA Curator and Department Head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
At the Baltimore Museum of Art, Dill will be working with Cozzi, the newly appointed head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. In 2018, Cozzi joined BMA as associate curator in the department and became curator in 2022. Her latest promotion was announced in tandem with Dill’s hiring.
During her seven-year tenure at BMA, Cozzi has curated and co-curated several notable exhibitions, including “Slavery, The Prison Industrial Complex: Photographs by Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick,” which featured images of Louisiana State Penitentiary, the prison that was formerly a plantation known as Angola; “Valerie Maynard: Lost and Found” (with now-BMA Director Asma Naeem); “SHAN Wallace: 410” (with Cecilia Wichmann); “Darrel Ellis: Regeneration,” the first comprehensive museum presentation of the artist; and “Omar Ba: Political Animals,” the Senegalese artist’s first solo U.S. museum exhibition. Cozzi has also worked on hundreds of acquisitions and important programs and initiatives, including the launch of BMA’s Valerie J. Maynard Internship.
The Baltimore Museum of Art also shared news that Robin Owen Joyce was promoted to the inaugural position of assistant curator of academic engagement. In the newly created role, Joyce will cultivate stronger relationships with local colleges and universities “through scholarly collaborations that center the museum’s collections and exhibitions.” He will work across all curatorial departments with particular engagement with the Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs and the Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies. Joyce previously served as BMA Getty Paper Project Fellow in Prints, Drawings, and Photographs (2022–2024).
Dill officially starts as assistant curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs in October. “I’m so grateful for the opportunity to join the BMA, an institution whose exhibitions and values I’ve long admired,” Dill said in a statement to Culture Type. “I’m honored to have been entrusted with the stewardship of such an exceptional collection of works on paper and excited to begin work advancing the museum’s values, especially their commitment to education in all its forms.” CT
BOOKSHELF
“Black Earth Rising: Colonialism and Climate Change in Contemporary Art” accompanies the exhibition currently on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art, through Sept. 21, 2025. The catalog was authored by Ekow Eshun. The forthcoming volume “Devin Allen: Baltimore” was made possible by the 2023 Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize and coincides with “Heavy with History: Devin Allen and the Baltimore Uprising,” a solo exhibition of the photographer on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art, through Sept. 21. “A Beautiful Ghetto” also explores Allen’s images of the Baltimore, his hometown city. Entomologist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was the subject of curator Olivia Dill’s Ph.D., dissertation. The botanical illustrations of Merian have been widely published. Selections include “Maria Sibylla Merian: Artist, Scientist, Adventure,” “Maria Sibylla Merian and Daughters: Women of Art and Science,” and “Maria Sibylla Merian: Changing the Nature of Art and Science,” which received the 2024 Annual Literature Award of the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries. “Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis: One Woman’s Discovery of the Transformation of Butterflies and Insects” was first published in 1705. Also consider, “Maria Sibylla Merian: 22 Pull-Out Posters,” which was released in 2020. For children, there is “The Bug Girl: Maria Merian’s Scientific Vision” and “The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science,” which was a Robert F. Sibert Medal winner.
