Elissa Watters joined the High in July 2026 as the Frances B. Bunzl Family Associate Curator of European Art. In her role, Watters is responsible for overseeing the museum’s European Art department, including related exhibitions and programs, as well as its collection of more than 1,100 paintings, sculptures and works on paper spanning six centuries of artistic endeavor, from the 1300s through the 1900s.
Watters previously served as guest curator at USC Fisher Museum of Art and at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in Brattleboro, Vermont, and as a research assistant at the Getty Research Institute. From 2018 to 2021, she was the Florence B. Selden Senior Fellow at Yale University Art Gallery, where she conducted collection research, led public programs and facilitated a significant promised gift of drawings and woodcuts by German artist Renate Geisberg-Wichmann. Her previous positions also include guest curator at Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Watters received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, with a dissertation on radical artmaking in western Germany between the World Wars. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College and a Master of Arts from the Williams College Graduate Program at Clark Art Institute. Since 2018, she has been a member of the Association of Print Scholars.