A specialist in mid-twentieth-century American art, Deborah Martin Kao has organized numerous exhibitions, has published on a wide array of topics, and has taught at Boston College, Boston University, Brown University, and Harvard University. She came to the Fogg Art Museum in 1994 as an assistant curator for photographs and was appointed Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography in 2000. Among Dr. Kao's publications are the award-winning exhibition catalogue Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times (Yale Press: 2000) and Gary Schneider: Portraits (Yale Press: 2004). She has long admired Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographs, including commentary on them in her contribution to Harvard's Art Museums: 100 Years of Collecting (Abrams: 1996) and featuring selections from the artist's Theatre Series in her 1999 exhibition Building Representation: Photography and Architecture: Contemporary Interactions, which was installed at the Fogg Art Museum.