Sandra Brooke Gordon

Sandra Brooke Gordon joined the Huntington in 2018 as Avery Director of the Library. She reports directly to the President and oversees some 75 librarians and support personnel. Her position focuses on strategic and financial planning and donor development. Some key areas of responsibility are engaging the large constituent communities of The Huntington and the general public through programming, exhibitions, and talks; making expert decisions regarding creating a digital environment; promoting the importance of maintaining a library of unique, valuable, and historically significant books and manuscripts; and collaborating with and complementing the other collection areas of The Huntington and the Research Division.

Before coming to The Huntington Gordon was director of the Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University from 2007 to 2017, overseeing all aspects of administration, programming, and collection development for one of America's oldest and most extensive art libraries. Tenures at Princeton, Yale, Williams College, and the Clark Art Institute heightened Gordon's appreciation for organizations that capitalize on the synergies of libraries, museums, and working scholars. Her academic training in art history with a specialization in British art and experience in the curatorial and public outreach arms of museums lend insight into the broader scope of The Huntington's operations.

Gordon has been involved in numerous digital initiatives and believes strongly in the power of computing and media to transform scholarship and to amplify the deep intrinsic values of library special collections. She led an international collaborative—the Digital Cicognara Library—that is recreating virtually one of the foundational art history libraries. She was a major contributor to Princeton's Blue Mountain Project, a digital collection of the historical avant-garde, and has been active on the boards of the Art Discovery Group Catalogue, Artifex Press, and Princeton's Center for Digital Humanities. From 2013 to 2017, Gordon was chair of the Art Libraries Section of IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions where she spearheaded programming for the annual World Congresses and forwarded projects that benefit art and special collections libraries worldwide such as IFLA's Risk Register for Documentary Heritage.

Gordon has a B.A. in Art History summa cum laude from Northwestern University, an M.A. in Art History with honors from Williams College, and did doctoral work in the history of art at Yale University where her principal research was in 18th- and 19th-century British art. Her M.L.S. is from the State University of New York at Albany.