Emily Ballew Neff
When Neff took the helm as executive director of Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in April 2015, she hit the ground running. The museum was gearing up for its centennial celebration, which included the opening of Inside Art, a gallery dedicated to visual literacy, two new series, Rotunda Projects and Brooks Outside, and permanent galleries for the art of Carroll Cloar and native-son photographers William Eggleston and Ernest C. Withers. This year, Brooks announced that Pritzker Prize winners Herzog & de Meuron will serve as design architect for its major, purpose-built, new facility overlooking the Mississippi River in Downtown Memphis. Neff brought experience as director and chief curator of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma and served nearly two decades as the first curator of American Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is a graduate of Yale University and Rice University, with a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, and is a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership in NYC.
