MaryKate Cleary
Art Historian, Researcher
Curator of Provenance, Princeton University Art Museum
MaryKate Cleary is the inaugural curator of provenance at the Princeton University Art Museum. She specializes in provenance research, the history of the art market, and legal and ethical issues of cultural heritage in a global context. Prior to joining the Art Museum, Cleary worked as a consultant for institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, with auction houses, galleries and art lawyers, and on behalf of communities and national governments. She also previously held roles at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Loss Register, Sotheby’s, artnet.com and the Jewish Museum New York. Cleary is co-editor with Frances Fowle of “The Art Market and the Museum: Institutional Collecting, Display and Patronage since the Mid-Nineteenth Century” (2025). She holds a bachelor’s degree in German language and literature from Catholic University, a master’s in history of art from The Courtauld and a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. She was a Fulbright Fellow at the Technische Universität Dresden.