MaryKate Cleary

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 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, supporting their work in provenance research and due diligence. She also held roles as collection and provenance specialist at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2013–15) and as manager of historic claims and provenance research at the Art Loss Register (2010–13). Cleary has also worked with Sotheby’s, artnet.com, and the Jewish Museum in New York. 

Cleary is completing her PhD at the University of Edinburgh with a dissertation on the history of Galerie Paul Rosenberg. She is co-editor with Frances Fowle of the volume The Art Market and the Museum: Institutional Collecting, Display and Patronage since the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2025). Cleary has taught widely on provenance research, holding the positions of adjunct professor at New York University (2014–17), Short Courses instructor at The Courtauld (2018–21), and lecturer of art business at Sotheby’s Institute, London (2021–23). She holds a BA in German Language and Literature from Catholic University (2006) and an MA in History of Art from The Courtauld (2010); she was also a Fulbright Fellow at the Technische Universität Dresden (2008–2009).