Thomas Padon

Thomas Padon joined the Brandywine Museum of Art in September 2012. Padon has held senior management positions at museums and arts organizations internationally. He came to the Brandywine Museum of Art from the Vancouver Art Gallery, one of the largest museums in Canada.  Based in New York, he was assistant director and director of international partnerships. He initiated collaborations with such leading museums as the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Musée d´Orsay, Paris, and organized such major exhibitions as Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore, and The Color of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art.  He also participated in strategic and institutional planning.

Previously, Padon was deputy director for exhibitions and programs at the American Federation of Arts, one of the country’s oldest national arts organizations. While there he organized major projects including Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum; Degas and the Dance (which was presented at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2002) and numerous exhibitions focusing on American artists such as Charles Burchfield, Arthur Wesley Dow and Maxfield Parrish (the latter of which was presented at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1999).  He also held senior curatorial positions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where he organized major exhibitions of the work of Josef Albers, Georges Braque and Joan Miró.

Publications by Padon include a catalogue raisonné of American artist Nancy Graves as well as Contemporary Photography and the Garden: Deceits and Fantasies, a book accompanying an exhibition that traveled to 6 venues, including the Delaware Art Museum in 2007.  Padon holds art history degrees from the University of Colorado and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.