Elizabeth Dospěl Williams

Associate in Research
Penny Vinik Chair of Fashion, Textiles and Jewelry, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Ph.D. New York University
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ewilliams@mfa.org

Elizabeth Dospěl Williams is Penny Vinik Chair of Fashion, Textiles and Jewelry at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. As Curator of the Byzantine Collection at Dumbarton Oaks, her exhibitions included Rich in Blessings: Women, Wealth, and the Late Antique Household (2023), Ornament: Fragments of Byzantine Fashion (2019), and Woven Interiors: Furnishing Early Medieval Egypt (2019). At the MFA, she curated Framing Nature: Gardens and Imagination (2026), and currently is part of a team reinstalling the museum’s medieval galleries. 

Dospěl Williams’ scholarship focuses on the wearable arts, interior design, provenance history, and comparative art historical approaches. Her research has appeared in Speculum, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture,Dumbarton Oaks Papers, and The Textile Museum Journal. She serves as Chair of the Editorial Board of The Art Bulletin and as President-Elect of the Historians of Islamic Art Association. Dospěl Williams holds a Ph.D. in Byzantine and Islamic art history and archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.