Dorothy Moss is the Founding Director of the Hung Liu Estate. From 2011-2023, Moss held the position of curator of painting and sculpture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. During her tenure at the Smithsonian, she was a leader of the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative, serving as coordinating curator of the Initiative from 2018-2021. In 2015 Moss initiated the National Portrait Gallery's first performance art series, IDENTIFY, where she commissioned new performances by renowned artists including James Luna, Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, Jeffrey Gibson, Lee Mingwei with Leslie Urena, and Maren Hassinger with Charlotte Ickes. From 2013-2019 Moss directed the Portrait Gallery’s triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. As curator of painting and sculpture she oversaw prominent commissions of portraits of women subjects by women artists, including Amy Sherald's portrait of Michelle Obama and Karin Sander’s portrait of Maya Lin, among others. Her recent projects include the exhibition and book, co-authored with Kim Sajet, Taina Caragol, and Richard Powell, The Obama Portraits, published by Princeton University Press in 2020 and the exhibition and book Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands published by Yale University Press in 2021 for which she received the Smithsonian Secretary's Prize for Excellence. Moss earned a BA from Smith College, an MA in Art History from Williams College, and a PhD in Art History from the University of Delaware.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Adjunct Lecturer, College - Department of Art & Art History