Seth Pevnick

Seth Pevnick joined the museum as curator of Greek and Roman art in March 2019, taking responsibility for researching, presenting, and augmenting the collection of art of the ancient Mediterranean world, including the art of Egypt and the ancient Near East. In September 2022, he was promoted to department chair, first of European art from classical antiquity to 1800, and later expanded to art of the ancient Mediterranean, Africa, and Europe to 1800 and decorative arts. In April 2024, together with Sarah Scaturro, he was named interim cochief curator. Previously, he worked at the Tampa Museum of Art, serving as the Richard E. Perry Curator of Greek and Roman Art (2009–19) as well as chief curator (2013–19) and acting director (July 2014–April 2015). While in Tampa, Pevnick curated numerous exhibitions, including the traveling exhibition Poseidon and the Sea: Myth, Cult, and Daily Life (2014–15) and Patricia Cronin, Aphrodite, and the Lure of Antiquity: Conversations with the Collection (2018). 

In addition to the Poseidon and the Sea catalogue, Pevnick has written for other museum exhibition catalogues as well as academic journals, conference proceedings, and archaeological excavation reports, particularly on ancient Greek vase painting. He has also contributed to the CMA Thinker blog and Cleveland Art, the CMA members magazine, and spoken widely at museums, universities, and conferences. While planning for a future reinstallation of the Greek and Roman art galleries, he has rewritten gallery labels for all the CMA’s Greek vases as well as the important bronze sculpture known as the Cleveland Apollo. His upcoming exhibition, scheduled for late 2026 and tentatively titled Named and Unnamed, explores a major paradox of ancient Greek art—the names that survive in signatures on artworks rarely align with the names of the artists most celebrated in ancient literature. 

Prior to his employment at Tampa, Pevnick served as curatorial assistant in the Department of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Villa, from 2008 to 2009. He holds a PhD in archaeology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in classical archaeology from Dartmouth College. The recipient of fellowships at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2006–7) and the American Academy in Rome (2019), Pevnick is a committee member of the Archaeological Institute of America and a board member of the Cleveland Archaeological Society. He also serves as an adjunct art history professor at Case Western Reserve University, where he has taught courses on Greek vase-painting and supervised numerous joint program student interns.

Contact the Curator at: classicalart@clevelandart.org