Malcolm Rogers

Malcolm Austin Rogers, CBE (born 1948 in Yorkshire) is a British art historian and museum administrator who served as the inaugural Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, from 1994 through 2015, the longest serving director in the institution's 150-year history. In this role, Rogers raised the status of the museum locally, nationally, and internationally, and brought both extensive popularity and occasional controversy to the museum. During his tenure, Rogers established a legacy of "opening doors" to the Boston community and audiences across the globe. He expanded the museum's encyclopedic collection and scholarship about it, mounted diverse and innovative exhibitions in MFA galleries and abroad, enhanced arts education and community outreach programs, and renovated and expanded the museum's historic building. Career A native of Yorkshire, Rogers was educated at Oakham School in Rutland, and Magdalen College and Christ Church, Oxford, earning a B.A. with first class honors and a D.Phil. in English literature. His doctoral thesis was on the travel writings of George Sandys, Treasurer of the Colony of Virginia, credited with being America's first poet. Prior to his role as Director of the MFA, Rogers worked his way up from Librarian and Archivist to deputy director at the National Portrait Gallery in London. An expert on 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-century portraiture, he has published on painting in England in the 17th century, notably on Anthony van Dyck and William Dobson, as well as on portrait photography, and London and its museums. In 1993 he was passed over for the position of Director of the National Portrait Gallery, and in the following year was appointed the Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he remained until his retirement in 2015.