A Fresh Vision: Dr. Keffie Feldman Joins the Boca Raton Museum of Art

Change at a museum isn’t just about swapping paintings or hanging new names on the walls. It’s about shifting the air — the way light hits a collection, the kinds of conversations that start in the galleries. That’s the kind of transformation the Boca Raton Museum of Art is preparing for with the arrival of its new Chief Curator, Dr. Keffie Feldman, who begins her role this November.

Feldman comes to Boca Raton after nearly a decade of shaping exhibitions across New England, from Amherst’s Mead Art Museum to Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, and most recently, the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut. There, she orchestrated a whirlwind of about fifteen exhibitions a year — a curatorial calendar that would make most teams break into a sprint. Under her direction, Mattatuck’s collection of more than 12,000 objects became not just a trove but a living conversation.

Her name first caught national attention with Stitching the Revolution (2024), an exhibition that used quilts as a lens into activism and collective memory. It swept up two major honors — the New England Museum Association’s “Specific Excellence Award” and the Connecticut League of Museums’ Award of Merit — and it’s soon to travel nationwide, bringing its layered storytelling to audiences across the U.S. between 2026 and 2028.

When Feldman talks about art, her voice folds scholarship into something deeply human. “An appreciation for the diversity of human expression is critical for a just and equitable society,” she says. “Museums create an important space to engage the community in dynamic and impactful encounters with art.”

That sense of connection — between object and audience, artist and community — is exactly what drew Boca Raton Museum Director Dr. Ena Heller to Feldman’s candidacy. “Keffie distinguished herself among a very competitive pool of candidates,” Heller notes. “She’s a passionate communicator with a warm presence who will be a wonderful ambassador for our institution.”

In her new role, Feldman will help lead a full reinstallation of the Museum’s collection and steer a reimagining of its exhibition calendar — a rethinking meant to deepen engagement and reflect the evolving identity of Boca Raton as a cultural destination. It’s a challenge she seems more than ready for.

Armed with a Ph.D. from Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World and a B.A. from Tufts University, Feldman has always approached curation as a kind of archaeology of experience — uncovering what art can tell us about being human. She’s curated more than twenty original exhibitions, including Modern Women: Georgia O’Keeffe and Kay Sage (2025), which explored the parallel paths of two pioneering modernists who refused to be confined by expectation.

For Boca Raton, her arrival signals more than a personnel change; it’s a philosophical one. The Museum’s curatorial voice — one that already speaks with confidence about modern and contemporary art — is about to gain a new inflection: curious, connective, and quietly revolutionary.