Anthony Hirschel now is an independent consultant in the arts. Previously, he spent two years as the Director of Exhibitions at the Alphawood Foundation in Chicago and as a consultant for a variety of academic art museums. Earlier, he served as the Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago for more than a decade from 2005.

Trained as an historian of the art of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance first at the University of Michigan and Yale, he has been active in art museum administration for 31 years, 26 of them as a museum director. Much of that time has been spent in some of the nation’s most ambitious academic art museums, first at Yale (1987-91) and then as the director of the art museums at the University of Virginia (1991-97) and Emory University (1997-2001). He also taught at Yale, Randolph-Macon Women’s College and the University of Chicago Law School. Before coming to the Smart Museum of Art, Hirschel served as the Director and CEO (2001-2004) of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, one of the largest art museums in North America.