Stephen Harrison

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

Stephen Harrison is the Director and Chief Curator at the Munson Museum of Art, where he is responsible for all curatorial, interpretive, and exhibition related operations. Since coming to Munson, Mr. Harrison has initiated a complete reinstallation of the Museum of Art galleries, participated in both the campus master plan and branding processes, added numerous important works to the collection, and curated the summer exhibitions.

Mr. Harrison joined Munson 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 his work in Cleveland, Stephen held similar curatorial positions in New Orleans, Dallas, and Atlanta.

He is also the co-author of numerous scholarly publications, including the award-winning Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique (2000), and more recently, The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s (2017). A former features contributor to Better Homes & Gardens, Mr. Harrison 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, Mr. Harrison holds advanced degrees in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania and American material culture from the Winterthur Museum Program at the University of Delaware.