Staff Information

Alex Barker, Director

Barker received his PhD in anthropological archaeology from the University of Michigan. He previously served as Vice President for Collections, Research and Exhibitions, and as chair of the Anthropology Department, at the Milwaukee Public Museum, and as Chief Curator and later interim Director of the Dallas Museum of Natural History. He is a graduate of the Museum Leadership Institute residential program at the Getty Museum, and he has served as chair of the ethics committees of both the Society for American Archaeology and the American Anthropological Association. He currently directs an international excavation project in western Romania, with previous fieldwork in Greece, Hungary, Romania, and more then twenty years of fieldwork in the American Midwest and Southeast. Recent publications include: "On Chiefdoms," in A Handbook of Archaeological Theory, edited by A. Bentley and H. Maschner, Altamira Press (2008); "Guidelines for the Responsible Acquisition of Antiquities and Cultural Property," Anthropology News 48 (3); "Archaeological Investigations at Pecica Santul Mare: The 2006 Campaign," Analele Banatului, S.N., Arheologie-Istorie, 14 (2006), Muzeul Banatului, Timisoara, Romania (with John M. O’Shea, Amy Nicodemus, Sarah C. Sherwood, and Alexandru Szentmiklosi); "Ethics, E-Commerce, and the Future of the Past," reprinted in Archaeology, Relics, and the Law, Carolina Law Casebook Series, Richard Cunningham, ed., Carolina Academic Press; and "Early Uses of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker," Science (2005). His work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the National Geographic Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, among others.

Mary Pixley, Associate Curator of European and American Art

Mary Pixley, PhD and MA University of Pennsylvania, was appointed Associate Curator in 2007. A Fulbright scholar and recipient of a Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Grant, she spent several years doing research in Italy. Most recently she held a Samuel H. Kress Curatorial Fellowship to oversee the collection of Old Master Paintings at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland. Prior to this she worked and lectured at the National Gallery of Art, where she studied the nature of cross-cultural artistic influences between Europe and West Asia as well as the complexity of the Italian, Islamic, and Chinese nexus. She published results of this research in "Islamic Artifacts and Cultural Currents in the Art of Carpaccio," Apollo 9 (November 2003). At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, she worked as a Research Coordinator for the exhibition Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century. Her interest in American art resulted in the article "Sargent after Velázquez: The Prado Studies," The Burlington Magazine (September 2003), which she co-authored with Richard Ormond. She has also contributed essays and catalogue entries on European Old Masters to a variety of publications. She has taught courses and lectured on Medieval and Renaissance European art and Islamic art at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She is currently working on an article about a Florentine Renaissance tapestry.

Benton Kidd, Associate Curator of Ancient Art

Kidd received his PhD from the University of Missouri, and his MA from Louisiana State University. He has been a Fulbright scholar, with extensive work onsite in Greece and Turkey. He was appointed assistant curator in 2001 and associate curator in 2002. He has been the curator of numerous exhibitions: Memoria Architecturae: the Fragmentary, the Forgotten and the Fantastic (2005); The Shadow of Olympus: Gods, Heroes and the Mythological Continuum (2003); Wit and Wine: A New Look at Ancient Iranian Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation (2002); Final Farewell: the Culture of Death and the Afterlife (2007), among others. His publications include contributions to Testament of Time: Selected Objects from the Collection of Palestinian Antiquities in the Museum of Art and Archaeology (2004), "Technique and Analysis of the Tel Anafa Villa’s Stucco," Muse 33, 34 & 35 (1999–2001), "The Identity Crisis of a Roman Empress," Muse 36, 37, & 38 (2002–2005), and he is currently working on a monograph on the Hellenistic villa excavated by the University at Tel Anafa, Israel. He has taught courses in ancient art and history of western art for Columbia College, Columbia, Missouri, and Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, and is currently a member of the graduate faculty of the MU Department of Art History and Archaeology.

Jeffrey Wilcox, Registrar

B.A., University of Missouri-Columbia, 1973
Wilcox has over 32 years experience with the Museum of Art and Archaeology, serving in the position of Registrar for the last 22 years. For loan exhibitions, he is responsible for processing and documentation, packing and shipping, condition reporting, and insurance. Beyond loans, his work with the Museum includes managing the collection database, performing collections photography, serving as chair of the Museum’s Collections and Exhibitions Committees, handling the institution’s archives and library matters, and performing research and curatorial duties for areas of the Museum’s collections for which there are no curators, especially with regards to the Museum’s non-Western collections. During his tenure with the Museum he has curated exhibitions on South Asian, African, and Pre-Columbian topics as well as assisting with numerous other exhibitions across all areas of the Museum’s holdings. In many aspects, he also has become a repository of the Museum’s institutional memory.

Cathy Callaway, Associate Educator

Callaway received her PhD from the University of Washington in Classics, her MA from the University of Missouri-Columbia in Classical Studies, and has experience teaching at the college and university level (Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and the University of Washington), as well as in secondary schools in Missouri; she is also a member of the graduate faculty of the MU Department of Classical Studies. She was the editor for Ancient Journeys: A Festschrift in Honor of Eugene Lane (2002), which features essays in fields such as archaeology, art history, classics, and history. Her other publications include: "Publishing a Festschrift in the 21st Century: the Virtual Dodo," Cloelia (Fall 2002); "Forum on Adjuncts and Part-Time Faculty," Papers from the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association (1998); "Odysseus, Lies, and Three Unsworn Oaths," American Journal of Philology 119 (1998); "Theriaka: A Panacea for All Periods," Muse 29 & 30 (1995–96); "The Typical Oath-scene in Vergil: Pattern and Divergence," Vergilius 40 (1994); "Perjury and the Unsworn Oath," Transactions of the American Philological Association, 123 (1993); and "Shrines and Festivals in Apuleius' Metamorphosis," Tropos 9 (Spring 1982). As a graduate student, she served as a research assistant to Dr. Gladys Weinberg, co-founder of the Museum of Art and Archaeology.

W. Arthur Mehrhoff, Academic Coordinator

W. Arthur Mehrhoff serves as the Academic Coordinator for the Museum of Art & Archaeology, working to strengthen the Museum’s historic role as a teaching museum. Arthur holds a Master’s degree in Urban Affairs from Washington University in Saint Louis and a Doctorate in American Studies from Saint Louis University, with an emphasis in Material Culture studies. His research interests include the phenomenology of place, historic preservation, and museum education. Arthur worked as a Museum Educator for the Museum of Westward Expansion at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (Gateway Arch) in Saint Louis. His book The Gateway Arch: Fact & Symbol (1992) examines the many layers of cultural meanings assigned to our nation’s tallest national monument. He also writes a column for Missouri Life magazine about Missouri’s heritage sites and continues to work with Missouri communities on historic preservation and heritage tourism issues.

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