An artist, curator, critic and arts administrator with more than 25 years experience, Brian H. Peterson is the Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest Chief Curator at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Also a critically-acclaimed author, his scholarly publications include Pennsylvania Impressionism (2002), The Cities, the Towns, the Crowds: The Paintings of Robert Spencer (2004), and Form Radiating Life: The Paintings of Charles Rosen (2006), all co-published by the Michener Art Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Press. USA Today praised Peterson‘s “luminous essays” in his stirring memoir, The Smile at the Heart of Things: Essays and Life Stories (2010, co-published by the Michener Art Museum and Tell Me Press).

Peterson picks up both pen and camera in his latest book, The Blossoming of the World: Essays and Images, releasing July 2011 from Tell Me Press.

Brian H. Peterson has had more than 30 solo exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the country since 1980. His work is in the collections of the Amon Carter Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Library of Congress, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the State Museum of Pennsylvania and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Delaware, receiving from them respectively a BA (in music composition) and an MFA (in photography).

Growing up, Peterson and his family followed his father‘s career as a petroleum geologist for Shell Oil Company, living in Casper, Wyoming; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Farmington, New Mexico before settling in Missoula, Montana when his father joined the faculty of the University of Montana. His mother was an elementary school teacher for 25 years. The aspiring artist moved to Philadelphia in 1974 to study at Penn‘s distinguished school of music. His wife, Helen Mirkil, is a painter, poet, and arts professional; together they are co-owners of Water Gallery in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.