Thayer Tolles is Marica F. Vilcek Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A sculpture specialist, she served as editor and co-author of a two-volume catalogue of the Metropolitan’s historic American sculpture collection (1999, 2001) and has lectured and published extensively on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century topics. Among her exhibitions are Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2009) and The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925 (2013-15), both accompanied by publications. She also contributed to the museum’s sesquicentennial exhibition and accompanying publication, Making The Met, 1870-2020 (2020) and is co-curator of New York Art Worlds, 1870-1890 (2022-23). A graduate of Williams College, Dr. Tolles received her M.A. from the University of Delaware and her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Since 2017 she also has served as the President of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, the nonprofit partner of the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, in Cornish, New Hampshire. In 2022 she was Cynthia Hazen Polsky/ Metropolitan Museum of Art Visiting Curator, American Academy in Rome, working on Paul Manship and his interest in the themes of time and space. She has spent several very productive times at MARS, reviewing Manship archival material.
