Claudia Pfeiffer recently joined the National Sporting Library and Museum as its George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Curator, a newly created position generously underwritten for the next five years by the George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Foundation.

Pfeiffer, who has an almost twenty-year background in fine art and brings with her a strong knowledge of American animal and sporting art, has a keen interest in furthering research in the field.

From 1994 to 1998, she directed Hardcastle Gallery in historic Centreville, DE, near Wilmington, where she mounted over sixty exhibits and installations, most featuring contemporary artists following the Brandywine Tradition.

In 1998 she moved to Virginia and began working at Red Fox Fine Art, the Middleburg gallery owned by F. Turner Reuter, Jr. that specializes in animal, sporting, and American paintings and sculpture.

During her thirteen year tenure, Pfeiffer became the gallery's assistant director and was then appointed director in 2005. Claudia also had the opportunity to be involved in many of Reuter's projects. She helped research, compile, edit, and design his 800-page reference work Animal and Sporting Artists in America, first published by the National Sporting Library and Museum in 2008 and its 2011 Second Edition.

She also supervised the publication of the National Sporting Library and Museum's Afield in America: 400 Years of Animal and Sporting Art exhibition catalogue and contributed as a photographer, editor, and writer.

Additionally, she helped mount the Afield in America exhibit and then assisted in researching, writing materials for, and mounting the museum's second show, The Wildlife Paintings of Bruno Liljefors.

On the advice of Reuter, Pfeiffer applied for the Museum's position in January and was among twelve candidates who were considered.

"It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a position in this field open up at such a prestigious institution, literally in my backyard, and I would have been a fool not to try for it," she said.

"I look forward to bringing my enthusiasm for this genre to the museum's audience and to mounting new and exciting material in the future."

Her first official roll as Curator was to mount Scraps: British Sporting Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection, which opened on April 6th and will be on view through June 30th.