Ulysses Grant Dietz

Ulysses Grant Dietz has been the curator of decorative arts at the Newark Museum since 1980 and the chief curator since 2012. Having organized over 100 exhibitions during his tenure, Dietz published The Newark Museum Collection of American Art Pottery in 1984 to mark the museum’s 75th anniversary. A quarter century later he updated that publication for the museum’s centennial with Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880–1930. He is particularly proud of his work on the Newark Museum’s 1885 Ballantine House, which was reinterpreted and restored as the centerpiece of the decorative arts department between 1992 and 1994. Most recently he oversaw the re-installation of the museum’s Lore Ross Jewelry Gallery, with a material-based approach to the expanding jewelry collection, Jewelry from Pearls to Platinum to Plastic. (Portrait picture: Newark Museum)