Bernice Harriet Rose (née Berend; October 7, 1935 – April 16, 2023) was an American art historian and curator.
Born in Miami Beach, Florida, she moved to Brooklyn, New York at age six.[1] Rose obtained her bachelor's in fine arts from Hunter College and a master's in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.[1]
In 1956, she married Herbert Rose, a legal adviser.[1]
Rose began her career at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as a secretary and later became a senior curator in the drawings department.[2] During her tenure, she organized exhibitions including A Cezanne Treasure: The Basel Sketchbooks, Surrealism, and Jackson Pollock: Drawing Into Painting.[2] She also authored publications such as Allegories of Modernism: Contemporary Drawing (1992).[2]
In 1993, after her time at MoMA, Rose joined Pace Gallery in New York as the director of special exhibitions.[1] [3] She curated exhibitions such as Henry Moore's 1930s and '40s drawings and Picasso, Braque and Early Film in Cubism.[1]
In 2007, Rose was appointed the inaugural chief curator of the Menil Collection's Drawing Institute in Houston.[1] [4] During her tenure, exhibitions featured artists such as Tony Smith, Claes Oldenburg, and Cy Twombly.[1] Rose retired from Menil in 2014.[1]
Later, Rose was the chief editor for the "Jasper Johns Catalogue Raisonne of Drawing" (2018) and an adviser to collector Louisa Stude Sarofim.[1]