Helga Kessler Aursich, Ph.D., was born in Germany but moved to New York with her family when she was ten and is the Curator of European Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. She majored in art history at Smith College and pursued graduate studies at the University of Vienna in Austria, and the University of Freiburg in Germany. After receiving her M.A. and Ph.D. she began her career at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2004 she joined the staff of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and brought numerous exhibitions to Houston, amongst them are The Masterpieces of French Painting, 1800 – 1920 and German Impressionist Landscape Painting: Liebermann – Corinth – Slevogt. She is widely published and a frequent lecturer on 19th century art.