"William Rush's Eagle for St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Philadelphia"

Thayer Tolles joined the American Wing staff in 1992. A sculpture specialist, she served as editor and co-author of a two-volume catalogue of the Museum’s historic American sculpture collection (1999, 2001); participated in the department’s renovation and reinstallation between 2001 and 2012; and organized numerous exhibitions with accompanying catalogues, including Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2009) and The American West in Bronze, 1850–1925 (2013). A graduate of Williams College, she received her MA from the University of Delaware and her PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.