Sara E. Cole Appointed as Next Bernard and Lisa Selz Director of Exhibitions & Gallery Curator at ISAW

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Sara E. Cole as Bernard and Lisa Selz Director of Exhibitions and Gallery Curator. She will join us at the end of March 2026 to lead ISAW’s exhibitions program into its third decade.

We are all hugely excited at the prospect of Dr. Cole’s arrival. ISAW’s Exhibitions are justly admired, and they provide a key means by which the Institute communicates its philosophy of an interconnected and interdisciplinary approach to ancient Afro-Eurasia. Sara E. Cole’s experience, energy and imagination impressed us enormously and we look forward to her joining the ISAW community.

Greg Woolf, Director of ISAW 

Dr. Cole comes to us from the Antiquities Department of the Getty Villa, where she has played a leading role in curating exhibitions on societies are varied as Ancient Assyria, Nubia, Persia, Thrace and Egypt. Many of these exhibitions have explored interconnections between one or more of these cultures and those of the Mediterranean World. She is currently preparing a major exhibition on Ancient Queenship. Dr Cole wrote a PhD at Yale on “Graeco-Egyptian Hybridization in Ptolemaic Egypt”. While at Yale also worked in the Yale University Art Gallery where she curated the exhibition “Drink That You May Live”: Ancient Glass from the Yale University Art Gallery.” She has co-edited four catalogues and published a string of articles and book chapters, mostly on Egyptological subjects.

The Directorship of Exhibitions is generously funded by Bernard and Lisa Selz. Bernard is a member of the ISAW Director’s Council and a longstanding supporter of cultural institutions, especially those devoted to world heritage. Bernard and Lisa have also endowed a fellowship in Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, and their Selz Foundation has endowed professorships in medieval art and Pre-Columbian art and archaeology at Columbia University. We are extremely grateful for their continued support of our mission.