Glenn Willumson is the director of the graduate program in Museum Studies and the coordinator of graduate studies for the School of Art and Art History. His experience in museums includes work at the Nelson Art Gallery (Davis, CA), the University Art Museum (Santa Barbara, CA), and the Getty Research Center where he was responsible for developing collections in American art, photography, European and American cultural history, and art historical methodology. He has also served as the curator of collections and, later, as senior curator at the Palmer Museum of Art. He has published articles about museums and collecting in Museum International, History of Photography, and has contributed essays for Section française de l'Institut international de conservation, and  Photos, Objects, Histories (Roufledge: 2004). In 2005-06, he participated in an intracollegiate study of the contribution of historic preservation and history museums to thier communities (Florida Department of State: 2006).  He has also written about the importance of education in art museums in the twenty-first century (NAEA: 2007).

In addition to his work in museum theory and practice, Willumson has remained an active scholar in art history where his primary interests are in the history of photography and American art. His essays have appeared in History of Photography, Victorian Studies, and American Art Review. He has published a book about media imagery, W. Eugene Smith and the Photographic Essay (Cambridge University Press: 1992) which earned a Getty Publication Grant. He is the recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships.  In 2007-8, he was a senior fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  Yale University (Bienecke) and Stanford University (Bill Lane Center) have awarded him research grants for his current research project “Iron Muse: Picturing the Transcontinental Railroad.”  The completed manuscript will be published by the University of California Press.