Maryan Ainsworth, who often publishes as Maryan Wynn Ainsworth, is an American art historian, author and curator specializing in 14th, 15th and 16th century Northern European painting, particularly in Early Netherlandish painting.
In this position, and previously as Senior Research Fellow in the Sherman Fairchild Paintings Conservation Department, she has specialized in an interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of Northern Renaissance paintings, uniting technical investigations with art historical inquiries.
Maryan is the editor of several books on art history methodology, and the principal author or chief collaborator on a number of exhibition catalogues, among them Petrus Christus Renaissance Master of Bruges (1994, Finalist Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Award); From Van Eyck to Bruegel, Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1998); Gerard David, Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition (1998, CINOA Prize and Apollo Books of the Year); Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, the Complete Works (2010, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award),[1] and with Elizabeth Cleland, Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry (2014, AAMC Award for Excellence).
German Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1350–1600, co-authored with Joshua Waterman, received the AAMC Award for Excellence (2013).
In the fall of 2017, Ainsworth was the Robert Janson-La Palme Visiting Professor at Princeton University.