SOLD OUT: Pulling Back the Curtain: A Portrait of American Art with William Keyse Rudolph, Regina Palm, and Emily Neff

Due to popular demand, this program is now sold out. Please register for online-only livestream access here to enjoy the program from the comfort of your home!

William Keyse Rudolph, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, returns to San Antonio for an evening of conversation with SAMA’s own Regina Palm, Marie and Hugh Halff Jr. Curator of American and European Art, and Emily Neff, The Kelso Director. Together, the trio will reflect on the origins and development of SAMA's collection of American art, its relationship to the broader landscape of American art collecting, and opportunities for the future. The evening will include an exclusive reveal and special tribute!

William Keyse Rudolph is Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Nelson-Atkins, a key role that helps shape the museum’s curatorial team, permanent collection, and exhibition directions. Prior to joining the museum’s leadership team, Rudolph served as Chief Curator and the Marie and Hugh Halff Curator of American and European Art at San Antonio Museum of Art, 2013–2020, along with duties as co-interim director. He also has served as a curator at Dallas Museum of Art, Worcester Art Museum, and Milwaukee Art Museum, in addition to holding research and support positions at Philadelphia Museum of Art in European paintings and European Decorative Arts.

Rudolph was educated at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of Virginia and Bryn Mawr College. He also has received decorative arts training through Attingham Summer School for Country Houses and Collections and Royal Collections Studies. In 2017, Rudolph was a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, an intensive leadership skills training program for art museum curators.

Major exhibitions Rudolph has organized or co-organized include Bluebonnets and Beyond: Julian Onderdonk, American Impressionist (2008–2009), In Search of Julien Hudson: Free Artist of Color in Pre-Civil War New Orleans (2011–2012), Thomas Sully: Painted Performance (2013–2014), Highest Heaven: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art from the Collection of Roberta and Richard Huber (2016–2017), and Spain: 500 Years of Spanish Painting from the Museums of Madrid (2018).

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Regina Palm joined the San Antonio Museum of Art in 2022 as the Marie and Hugh Halff, Jr. Curatorial Fellow for American Art. Palm previously served as Curator of American Paintings at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, where she curated and authored the catalogue for The Stebbins Collection: A Gift for the Morse Museum. She has served as the Associate Curator of American Art at the San Diego Museum of Art as well as Curatorial Associate at the Kimbell Art Museum, where she authored the exhibition catalogue The Collection of Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass. Palm has also served as Curatorial Research Assistant at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Cincinnati Art Museum. She received her bachelor’s in art history from California State University, Chico, her master’s in art history from San Jose State University, and her PhD in the history of art from the University of London. Palm’s research has appeared in the Journal of Design History, Women’s History Review, and other publications.

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Emily Ballew Neff is The Kelso Director of the San Antonio Museum of Art, where she has served since January 2022. Throughout her career, Emily has been driven by a vision to bring people and great art together in meaningful ways. Her work has further been guided by an interest in situating American art in a more expansive, global context and nurturing interest across diverse cultures and geographies.

For over six years, Neff led the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, where, among other accomplishments, she guided the decision-making process and fundraising effort to relocate the Brooks to downtown Memphis and into a new building designed by renowned architecture firm, Herzog & de Meuron. The project, which is slated for completion in 2026, will vastly improve the museum’s ability to serve its community.

Neff’s longest tenure was at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she began in 1989 as a curatorial assistant and rose to become the first head of the department of American Painting and & Sculpture, a position she held from 1997 to 2013. In her leadership role, she grew the department’s collection dramatically, organized more than 20 exhibitions, authored or co-authored six catalogues and contributed essays to numerous others. She has held research fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA; the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Research Center in Santa Fe, NM, and Bayou Bend Collection & Gardens at the MFAH. She received her B.A. in the history of art at Yale University; her M.A. in art history at Rice University; and her Ph.D. in the history of art at the University of Texas at Austin, where her dissertation on John Singleton Copley formed the basis of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1995).