Newsroom

Dr. Mark A. Roglán Named
Director of the Meadows Museum


Dr. Mark A. Roglán

DALLAS (SMU) – Following a nationwide search, Dr. Mark A. Roglán has been named director of the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, effective retroactively to January 1, 2006. Dr. Roglán, a native of Madrid and a specialist in Spanish art, had served as interim director of the museum since May 2005, when he succeeded former director Dr. Edmund Pillsbury. The Meadows Museum houses one of the finest collections of Spanish art outside of Spain.

Dr. Roglán joined the Meadows Museum as interim curator and adjunct assistant professor of art history in October 2001. He became curator of collections in January 2002 and senior curator in June 2004. He also serves as adjunct associate professor in the Division of Art History at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts.

At the Meadows Museum, he has initiated and curated a number of important exhibitions, including the major international loan exhibition “Prelude to Spanish Modernism: Fortuny to Picasso” that is now on view until February 26, 2006. This past fall, in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, he secured the first major exhibition of Spanish tapestries to be shown in America. The exhibit, “Weaving the Legend of Don Quijote: 18th Century Tapestries for the Royal Court of Spain,” had its only U.S. showing at the Meadows Museum, where it drew record crowds and generated the highest per-week attendance of any exhibition since the museum building opened in 2001. Dr. Roglán also obtained a long-term loan of ten important Medieval and Early-Renaissance Spanish paintings and sculptures from the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which are presently on display at the Meadows.

Other distinguished exhibitions he has curated at the Meadows Museum in the past several years include “Goya’s Mastery in Prints,” “In the Meadows: Recent Sculpture, Drawings and Prints of James Surls,” and “Titans of Modern Mexico.” He also played crucial roles in the planning and development of the important exhibitions “Spanish Master Drawings from Dutch Collections (1500-1900),” “Greek Vase Painting: Treasures of the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid” and “Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life (1521-1821).”

Dr. Roglán is currently directing and coordinating a major study on “The Paintings from the Altarpiece of the Cathedral in Ciudad Rodrigo (Spain),” a group of 27 panels by 15th-century Hispano-Flemish artist Fernando Gallego that will be on display at the Meadows Museum in the near future. He also is collaborating with the Patrimonio Nacional in Madrid to present “Juan van der Hamen y Leon” from March 16 to May 28, a groundbreaking exhibit offering the first comprehensive view of the paintings of Van der Hamen, one of the most fascinating artists of Spain’s Golden Age. The Meadows will be the only American venue for the exhibit, which was curated by Dr. William Jordan, the founding director of the Meadows Museum. In addition, Dr. Roglán is collaborating with the University of North Texas-Texas Fashion Collection to present “Balenciaga and His Legacy” from September 10 to November 26, a retrospective of couture dresses, hats and accessories by Cristóbal Balenciaga, the most important Spanish fashion designer of the 20th century.

“Dr. Roglán has done an outstanding job at the Meadows Museum in positions of significantly increasing responsibility over the past four years,” said Carole Brandt, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts. “His scholarship, creativity, energy, and commitment have raised the museum’s profile and brought recognition and respect from both the public and the international art community. His collaboration with museums worldwide is enabling our institution to present some very exciting exhibitions that other museums can only dream about. We look forward to a very bright future for the Meadows Museum with Dr. Roglán’s leadership.”

“Dr. Roglán’s academic credentials, accomplishments and leadership in the world of art will not only advance the Meadows Museum, but also will be a source of inspiration for students in the Meadows School of the Arts and the entire University,” said SMU President R. Gerald Turner.

“The Meadows Museum has embarked on an exciting period of growth and momentum,” Dr. Roglán said. “I am honored to be named the director of this remarkable institution, and I look forward to helping the museum achieve its fullest potential and increasing the recognition and appreciation of its incredible assets.”

Before coming to the Meadows Museum, Dr. Roglán worked as a curatorial fellow and a research associate in the 19th-century painting and sculpture department of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, from January 1999 to September 2001. There he collaborated on numerous projects for 19th-century art exhibitions, wrote for diverse exhibition catalogues and helped to prepare a raisonné catalogue of the Prado’s entire collection of 19th-century paintings and sculptures – more than 4,100 works in all. He also worked on several scholarly publications as a researcher of the 19th-century painting collection of the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid and collaborated on the forthcoming raisonné catalogue on the works of the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla for the Foundation for the Preservation of the History of Hispanic Art in Spain.

Before his tenure at the Prado Museum, Dr. Roglán served as a drawings department assistant with the Fogg Museum at Harvard University. During the previous academic year, he studied at Tufts University through a Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Scholarship. Among other fellowships and honors, Dr. Roglán was awarded an Erasmus European Union Scholarship for a year-long study at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and a Fundación Argentaria Fellowship for the study of 16th-century art at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

Dr. Roglán received master’s degrees in both world history and art history and a doctorate in 19th- and 20th-century art from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His dissertation, 19th-Century Spanish Paintings in Public Collections in the United States, featured a number of works at the Meadows Museum.

Other administrative changes made with the hiring of the new director include the appointment of Greg Brown as managing director of the museum, overseeing the museum’s administrative and operational functions. Brown also will continue to serve in his current capacity as managing director of the Meadows School of the Arts.

The Meadows Museum, a division of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain, with works dating from the 10th to the 20th century. It includes masterpieces by some of the world’s greatest painters: El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, Goya, Miró and Picasso.

###