| Virginia M. Mecklenburg | |
| Birth Name: | Virginia Helen McCord |
| Birth Date: | 11 November 1946 |
| Birth Place: | United States |
| Spouse: | Marion Mecklenburg |
| Occupation: | Art historian Curator |
| Alma Mater: | University of Texas at Austin University of Maryland |
| Discipline: | Art history |
| Sub Discipline: | American art |
| Thesis Title: | American Aesthetic Theory, 1908-1917: Issues in Conservative and Avant-Garde Thought |
| Thesis Url: | https://catalog.umd.edu/docno=001266906 |
| Thesis Year: | 1983 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Elizabeth Johns |
Virginia Helen McCord Mecklenburg (born November 11, 1946) is an American art historian and curator. She was a curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum for 45 years, from 1979 to 2024.
Mecklenburg received two English degrees from the University of Texas at Austin: a Bachelor of Arts in 1968 and a Master of Arts in 1970. Her master's thesis was titled "An Analysis of Role Playing as a Method of Teaching English to the Disadvantaged Learner."[1] Mecklenburg then continued on to the University of Maryland to earn a Ph.D. in art history in 1983.[2] Her doctoral dissertation "American Aesthetic Theory, 1908-1917: Issues in Conservative and Avant-Garde Thought" was supervised by Professor Elizabeth Johns.[3]
Mecklenburg became a curator of painting and sculpture at the National Museum of American Art, later the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), in 1979.[2] A scholar of American art, Mecklenburg has written publications on such artists as George Bellows, Richard Estes, William Glackens, Edward Hopper, Robert Indiana, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Sloan, and Robert Vickrey.[2] Exhibitions organized or co-organized by Mecklenburg include "The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930-1945" (1989);[4] "Edward Hopper: The Watercolors" (1999);[5] "Earl Cunningham's America" (2008),[6] "Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell From the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg" (2010),[7] "African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era and Beyond" (2012);[8] "Richard Estes' Realism" (2014);[9] and "Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women" (2024).[10]
At SAAM, Mecklenburg rose from associate curator[11] [12] to chief curator.[13] Stephanie Stebich, who became SAAM director in 2017, effectively demoted Mecklenburg to "senior curator" in 2019; Stebich was subsequently removed from the director position by Smithsonian Institution management in mid-2024, after years of declining staff morale and complaints about workplace environment.[13]
Mecklenburg retired from SAAM in April 2024.[13]