Worcester Art Museum Appoints Jeremy Reeves as New Higgins Assistant Curator of Arms and Armor

WORCESTER, MA—July 14, 2026—The Worcester Art Museum (WAM) today announced the appointment of Jeremy Reeves as the Higgins Assistant Curator of Arms and Armor and European Decorative Arts. Reeves, whose scholarly work bridges European and global arms and armor traditions, joins the Museum as it continues to build on the legacy of one of the foremost arms and armor collections in the United States, the John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection, which opened in newly designed galleries at WAM in November 2025. Reeves will begin work at the Museum this August.

“Jeremy’s appointment reflects exactly the kind of curatorial vision and depth of scholarship we were looking for,” said Claire Whitner, the Museum’s Director of Curatorial Affairs and the James A. Welu Curator of European Art. “He brings hands-on museum experience alongside rigorous, international academic training. Moreover, his understanding of the relationship between arms and armor and broader art historical and cultural contexts aligns strongly with WAM’s approach and will serve both our collection and our visitors well.”

Reeves’ professional experience spans curatorial practice across multiple institutions. At Bard Graduate Center, where he has served as a curatorial assistant since 2021 while completing his doctorate, Reeves has contributed to more than a half-dozen exhibitions spanning decorative arts from across Europe and Africa, while also teaching a graduate seminar on early modern arms and armor as interdisciplinary objects. Earlier, as Curator at the Lac-Brome Museum in Quebec, he managed a collection of more than 15,000 objects and led the process that earned the museum provincial accreditation. During his career, his research has been supported by a grant from the American Society of Arms Collectors and has been presented at the Renaissance Society of America and at the Institute of Fine Arts–Frick Collection Graduate Symposium.

Among the exhibitions Reeves has contributed to at Bard Graduate Center are Sightlines on Peace, Power and Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa (2023), Staging the Table in Europe 1500–1800 (2023), Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today (2024), and Sonia Delaunay: Living Art (2024), with Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film currently in preparation. His publications include a forthcoming article in the American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin on the emergence of gunsmithing in sixteenth-century France. He is also a co-editor and contributing author of the Lac-Brome Museum’s catalogue Wood & Wheeler (2021).

Reeves holds a PhD in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from Bard Graduate Center, where his dissertation, “Playing with Fire: Sixteenth-Century French Firearms and Early Modern Gun Culture,” documents the origins of France’s gunsmithing industry and analyzes firearms as expressions of medieval artistic and cultural traditions. He also holds an MPhil in Museums and Archaeological Heritage from the University of Cambridge, which he completed with a dissertation titled “Appropriating Militarism and Imperialism: Indian Arms and Armour in The Prince of Wales and Wallace Collections and the Public Performance of Masculinity, 1857–1914.” Reeves holds dual bachelor’s degrees—both awarded summa cum laude—from Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris.

“The Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum is one of the great arms and armor holdings in the world, and the Museum’s commitment to presenting these objects as art is exactly the approach I have devoted my career to advancing,” said Reeves. “I look forward to deepening the collection’s scholarship, expanding its reach across audiences, and exploring the global connections that make arms and armor such rich witnesses to artistic and cultural history.”

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