Bruce Boucher

Bruce Boucher, an architectural historian and museum curator, who has divided his career between education, scholarship and museum administration, became the director of the University of Virginia Art Museum on March 1, 2009. He as formerly the curator of European sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, a position he held since 2002.

Boucher is the author of numerous books, among them Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time, and he lectures widely on Palladio as well as Italian artists such as Donatello, Tintoretto and others, with a focus on the artists working in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. He was chief curator of the exhibition, Earth and Fire: Italian Terracotta Sculpture from Donatello to Canova, which was shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2001-2002. He also co-authored the exhibition catalog.

Boucher earned his B.A., magna cum laude in Classics and English from Harvard University and a B.A., M.A., in English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Before entering Oxford, he traveled to Italy and fell in love with the art and architecture. This event led him to change his course of research. After Oxford he went on to earn a M.A. with distinction at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and then a Ph.D. there with a thesis on the Venetian sculpture of the architect Jacopo Sansovino.

Boucher serves on numerous professional organizations and advisory committees. He has received various honors, including a fellowship at the prestigious Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti, the Alexander von Humbolt Fellowship, and the Salimbeni Prize for his monograph, The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino. He also was a guest scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum and served as guest curator on the research department of the Victoria and Albert Museum from 2000 to 2002.