Dr. Girnius holds master's and doctoral degrees in art history from Bryn Mawr College, and a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame. A generalist in the history of art, Rima's scholarly focus is on Early Modern Art of Germany and the Netherlands. At the MAA, she has reinstalled the galleries of European and American Art and Modern and Contemporary Art, revealing cross-cultural exchanges and expanding traditional Western art narratives to emphasize diverse voices and global connections. She has curated a diverse range of exhibitions and related programming balancing scholarly rigor with public accessibility. Prior to joining the MA&A, she served as Associate Curator, European Painting and Sculpture at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO), Curator at the Figge Art Museum (Davenport, IA), and was the recipient of the Allen Whitehill Clowes Fellowship at Newfields (previously the Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN). In addition to her curatorial work, she has served as Managing Director of the Goethe Pop Up Kansas City, a branch of the Goethe-Institut, where she led a German government cultural diplomacy initiative, and as a guest lecturer on exhibition conception, development, and design for the Western Illinois University Museum Studies Program.