Juan Antonio Murro

Subject Specialty

Professional Biography

Juan Antonio Murro joined Dumbarton Oaks in 2004, and currently serves as chief curator for the Dumbarton Oaks Museum. In this role, he oversees collection care, documentation, and dissemination; manages the museum team; advises on gifts and acquisitions; and oversees preparation of the budget.  With more than twenty-five years of museum experience, he also provides leadership and liaises with other departments to ensure proper stewardship of the collections, and collaborates on institution-wide research, publication, education, and outreach projects.

After graduating as a professional archaeologist from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Murro followed his lifetime interest in museums with postgraduate education in museum studies both in Japan—at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka—and the United States, with a master’s degree in museum studies from New York University. His interest includes cultural philanthropy and collecting, the art of Pre-Columbian complex societies, issues in cultural heritage, and the archaeology of the Central Andes. His latest projects include Written in Knots: Undeciphered Accounts of Andean Life (2019), the most comprehensive khipu exhibition to date; and “The History of the Central America and Colombian Collection at Dumbarton Oaks” (2021), a chapter in Pre-Columbian Art from Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks, the fifth and final catalogue of the “Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks” series, edited by Colin McEwan and John W. Hoopes.