Galina Olmsted joined Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) in 2024 as associate curator of European art. Prior to her arrival at Mia, she was a curator at the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, where she organized a range of exhibitions including “The Art of the Character: Highlights from the Glenn Close Costume Collection.”
She has also worked in curatorial departments at the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
A specialist in 19th- and early 20th-century European art, Olmsted contributed to the exhibition catalogues accompanying “Van Gogh Repetitions” in 2013 and “Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye” in 2015, as well as “Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men,” opening at the Musée d’Orsay in 2024.
After completing her undergraduate studies at Georgetown University, she earned an MA in art history and museum studies at Case Western Reserve University and a PhD in art history at the University of Delaware. Her doctoral dissertation explored Gustave Caillebotte’s motivations and strategies at all eight of his lifetime exhibitions in Paris, New York, and Brussels.
