Sara E. Cole

Sara E. Cole holds a PhD in Ancient History from Yale University. With training in the fields of Classics and Egyptology, her research focuses on the art and visual culture of Greco-Roman Egypt and, more broadly, on cross-cultural encounters in antiquity. While at Yale, she served as Graduate Curatorial Intern in the Ancient Art Department of the Yale University Art Gallery and curated the 2017 exhibition “Drink That You May Live”: Ancient Glass from the Yale University Art Gallery.

She joined the antiquities curatorial department at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2016. While at the Getty, Sara became Managing Curator of the museum’s Classical World in Context initiative, an ongoing series of exhibitions and related publications and public programs that explore the relationship of ancient Greece and Rome to their neighbors. She was co-curator of the Getty exhibitions Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World, Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq, Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World, and Ancient Thrace and the Classical World: Treasures from Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece. Sara curated the Getty exhibitions Nubia: Jewels of Ancient Sudan, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, and Sculpted Portraits from Ancient Egypt, and was part of the curatorial team that developed the exhibition Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins. For several of these exhibitions, she co-edited and contributed to an accompanying catalogue. The exhibition catalogue for Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World, co-edited with Jeffrey Spier and Timothy Potts, received the 2023 PROSE Award in the Art Exhibitions category.

Sara joined ISAW as the Director of Exhibitions in 2026.