Marla Berns

Marla Berns is the Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Before coming to UCLA in 2001, Berns was director of the UC Santa Barbara University Art Museum and received her PhD in art history at UCLA. Her research and writing have concentrated on women’s arts in Northeastern Nigeria. Throughout her career, she has curated exhibitions on topics as wide-ranging as women’s inventions, 1930s fashion, the history of underwear, Japanese prints, 20th-century design, and her specialty, African art.