Thank You, Sue Frank, for 27 Years of Service

After nearly three decades at the Phillips, Curator Sue Behrends Frank has retired. Thank you, Sue, for your commitment and innumerable contributions to preserving our institutional legacy, advancing the museum’s scholarship, and sharing the power of art. We’ll miss you!

Sue first joined the Phillips as a volunteer at the information desk while she was completing her PhD. In 1997 she became the Tour Coordinator for the education department, and later joined the curatorial department in 2000. Over the past 24 years she has curated more than 20 exhibitions and secured important gifts by European and American artists for the museum. With a deep understanding of Duncan and Marjorie Phillips’s collecting philosophy and their museum’s unique role in the art world, she led efforts to grow the museum’s collection of American art and advance our scholarship in that field. Thanks to Sue, the museum’s fastest growing area of acquisition in the past decade has been mid-20th-century American photography. 

Especially notable among the many exhibitions Sue curated is Made in the USA: American Masters from The Phillips Collection, 1850-1970 (2014). The expansive exhibition covering three floors featured more than 200 works from the permanent collection and was the largest installation of the museum’s holdings in American art undertaken since 1976.  Sue also curated and wrote essays for American Impressionists: Painters of Light and the Modern Landscape (2007) and David Smith Invents (2011). More recently she co-curated two major international loan shows: Picasso: Painting the Blue Period, which was chosen by critics at the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal as one of the 10 best exhibitions of 2022 and An Italian Impressionist in Paris: Giuseppe De Nittis, chosen by the Washington Post as one of the 10 best exhibitions of 2023. Sue also curated traveling exhibitions that showcased the museum’s European and American collections in the US and abroad in Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. 

Sue’s deep knowledge of the Phillips’s history and collection—and passion for art and sharing Duncan Phillips’s legacy and collection with the world—will be missed, as much as her warmth, ever present smile, and sense of humor. Best wishes, Sue!