Susanne Ebbinghaus is the George M.A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art and Head of the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at the Harvard Art Museums. Born and raised in Germany, she studied classical archaeology at the universities of Freiburg and Oxford (M.Phil. 1993, D.Phil. 1998) and excavated at several ancient sites in the eastern Mediterranean. Her research focuses on the art and archaeology of Greece and the Near East, with special interests in the material culture of feasting and the complex cross-cultural exchanges that connected east and west in antiquity.
At the Harvard Art Museums, Susanne Ebbinghaus organized Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity (2007), an exhibition that explored the original coloration of ancient sculpture, and worked on the installation of the collections galleries for the museums’ fall 2014 reopening. She edited Superficial? Approaches to Painted Sculpture, a special issue of Source: Notes in the History of Art (2011), and Ancient Bronzes through a Modern Lens, a collection of essays on the scientific and art historical study of ancient bronzes. Currently, she is preparing for the fall 2018 exhibition Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings.
Susanne Ebbinghaus has taught courses in Classics and History of Art and Architecture, and is engaged in the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis in Turkey. She has held research fellowships from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Germany, and the Bard Graduate Center, New York.