Gallery Staff

Gallery Front Desk: 215.898.1479

Lynn Marsden-Atlass

Executive Director and University Curator
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Lynn Marsden-Atlass has been the Executive Director of the Arthur Ross Gallery since 2008 and Curator of the University of Pennsylvania Art Collection since 2010. She has curated 32 exhibitions at the Arthur Ross Gallery, organized nine exhibitions drawn from the

Penn Art Collection and partnered with faculty from the Department of the History of Art on eight Curatorial Seminar exhibitions. The Gallery’s multidisciplinary programs of artist talks, music, dance, theatre, and poetry have expanded access and inclusion, and doubled attendance. Inaugurated in 2015, the Susan T. Marx Distinguished Lecture has brought world-renowned artists, museum directors, and scholars to inspire students and the Philadelphia community.

As University Curator, Marsden-Atlass has revitalized the campus loan program, introduced onsite object-based learning, established open access to the collection, and new scholarship. The Penn Art Collection includes over 8,000 objects located in 115 different locations across campus.

Marsden-Atlass is Chair of the On-Campus Art Committee and the Art Advisory Committee. In 2020 she was appointed to the Campus Iconography Group.

Previously, Ms. Marsden-Atlass served as the Senior Curator of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts;  Curator of American and Contemporary Art at the Chrysler Museum of Art; Associate Director and Registrar of the Colby College Museum of Art; and Director of the Consortium of Colleges Abroad in Paris, France. She was professor of 19^th century  French Art  for the British Institute in Paris and three college programs in Paris, and adjunct professor in the Départment d’anglais at Université de Caen in 1992-93. In 2016 she was an Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She earned an M.A. in the History of Art from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in the History of Art from Lake Forest College. From 2010 – 2019 Marsden-Atlass served on the board of the American Association of Academic Museums and Galleries, and currently serves as an IMLS MAP Surveyor and an AAM Accreditation Reviewer.

Emily Zimmerman

Assistant Director / Assistant Curator
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Emily Zimmerman (she/her) is the Assistant Director/Assistant Curator at the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently she was the Director + Curator of the Jacob Lawrence Gallery at the University of Washington, where she advocated for artists using an expansive intersectional lens to advance racial and gender equity and worked with students to become active participants in today's arts ecology.  Prior to joining the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Emily served as the Associate Curator of Programs at the Henry Art Gallery, where much of her work focused on building institutional partnerships and off-site programming. She began her curatorial career as the Assistant Curator at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), organizing film and lecture series, and commissioning new work from artists. She has curated over 50 exhibitions and commissions with artists such as Kerry Tribe, Clotilde Jiménez, Danny Giles, and others. She has also organized lecture and film series, performance festivals, and workshops.

Emily’s writing has appeared in BOMB and Contemporary Performance, and she has served on review panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, New York State Council on the Arts, Artist Trust, 4Culture, among others. Emily earned her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and her BA from New York University.

Sara Stewart

Associate Director of Development and Marketing
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Sara Stewart handles the development and marketing including public relations for the Gallery, and coordinates outreach activities at the Arthur Ross Gallery. She also manages fundraising events and grants and assists with exhibition preparation.  Ms. Stewart is an active participant in the arts, currently serving on the Board as Director of Development for Philadelphia’s The Stagecrafters Theater for the organization. She has also curated art exhibitions at Chestnut Hill College, where she received her B.A. in History of Art.

Elizabeth McClafferty

Gallery Coordinator
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Arthur Ross Gallery Advisory Board

Andre Dombrowski, Chairman ·
Benjamin Behrend · Richard Fitzgerald · Pamela Harper · Lothar Haselberger · Robin Herdon · David Hollenberg  · Anne Munch Jensen · Betsy Scott Kleeblatt · Susan T. Marx · Joshua Mosley · Matthew Neff · Sheila Raman · Christine Weller