Stephen Harrison

Director and Chief Curator
(315) 797-0000 ext. 2140

Stephen Harrison is the director and chief curator at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, where he is responsible for all curatorial, interpretive, and exhibition-related operations in the Museum of Art. He joined the Institute after a distinguished career as curator of decorative art and design at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where he oversaw a premier collection of American and European design from 1500 to the present. He was also a member of the Landmarks Commission for the City of Cleveland. Before coming to Cleveland, Stephen held similar curatorial positions in New Orleans, Dallas, and Atlanta. 

Since coming to Munson-Williams, Stephen has initiated a two-year complete reinstallation of the Museum of Art galleries, participated in both the campus master plan and branding processes, and curated the 2022 summer exhibition, Norman Rockwell. He is the author of numerous scholarly publications, including the award-winning Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique, and more recently, The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s. A former features contributor to Better Homes and Gardens, Stephen lectures widely on the subject of decorative arts and historic interiors around the world.

A graduate of the University of Virginia, where he was a Jefferson Scholar, Stephen holds advanced degrees in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania and material culture from the Winterthur Museum Program at the University of Delaware.