Alumnae Artists: Emma Gylling Mortensen ’15

Ms. Emma Gylling Mortensen ’15 grew up in New York City surrounded by some of the world’s most significant museums, and was immersed in the arts at home from an early age—her mother is a visual editor, and her father is a photographer. She credits her early exposure to art, combined with an art history course at Brearley, for setting her on the professional path that led to her role as a curatorial assistant at the Frick Collection.

Ms. Mortensen attended Brearley K–XII, and in Class XI, she enrolled in an art history elective with Ms. Valerie Mendelson ’75 (retired history teacher)that would change her perspective on her future studies.“That class was really eye-opening for me: I was never going to be a mathematician or a scientist, but I was very interested in history and loved the humanities,” she reflects.

“That was the first time I realized art history was something you could actually study or make a career of,” she says. “I would credit that class with putting me on the track that I’m still on today. I think things locked into place, and something made sense to me.”

As part of the course, Ms. Mortensen and her classmates would visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art or another cultural institution every Thursday, depending on what they were studying at the time. She recalls Ms. Mendelson encouraging them to explore the galleries, observe pieces that spoke to them, and share their thoughts with her. “We were so incredibly lucky to be down the street from the Met and actually learn about the world of art right in front of us,” she says.

By the time Ms. Mortensen started her senior year at Brearley, she knew she wanted to continue studying art history. She applied to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland as an art history and English major, and remembers spending “the rest of the year looking forward to being back in a classroom that was focused on art history.”

During her time at St. Andrews, Ms. Mortensen held several internships at museums and discovered she loved the pace and how much she could learn each day. She set her sights on working in museums and, during her senior year, applied to the Courtauld Institute of Art in London for a master’s degree. At that point, she hadn’t decided on a specialization, but had an opportunity to visit Rome for the first time during that spring. She describes the trip as a “formative experience,” recalling, “for the first time, I was surrounded by the most beautiful works by Caravaggio and Bernini, and other great seventeenth-century artists that I had only ever seen before on slides.”

The trip was a pivotal experience that set her on a trajectory for the rest of her career, solidifying her interest in seventeenth-century and Italian painting. “I immediately said this is what I want to do, and this is the period that I really want to study,” she says.

Since completing her master’s degree, Ms. Mortensen has focused on a curatorial path and now works directly with the chief curator at the Frick Collection. “I knew I wanted to be a curatorial assistant, support a curator, and learn directly from them. I got very lucky to end up at the Frick,” she says.

Ms. Mortensen distinctly remembers the first time she visited the Frick with her mother as a young teenager. “I feel very lucky to work there—it was a dream institution for me, and it still feels kind of unreal sometimes!” she admits. 

The collection aligns precisely with Ms. Mortensen’s academic interests—especially the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—and she now works with some of the experts she used to read about in her studies. “It’s kind of incredible to have seen their work as scholars and curators and actually get to work with them,” she says. “I couldn’t ask for a better learning experience.”

“My favorite part of my job is when I’ve learned something new, whether that’s a new object in the collection or a new process at the museum,” she says.

Ms. Mortensen credits being open to trying something completely new and facing the unknown with where she is professionally. “Being open to different possibilities, especially ones you might not expect, can take you a lot of places,” she shares. “My first jobs right out of school were some of the best experiences because they taught me how things worked in my industry.” 

Brearley’s emphasis on the visual arts has been part of Ms. Mortensen’s story from the very beginning: her parents still talk about seeing student art on the lobby walls during their first visit as prospective parents. “They knew it was a rigorous environment, but that helped them understand Brearley’s emphasis on a well-rounded, liberal arts program,” she reflects. 

“You can’t deny that coursework would shape a student interested in a creative field,” she muses. “I think Brearley should be really proud that the visual arts are an important part of the coursework and round out the program so nicely.”