Hilary Pierce Hatfield is a New England native growing up in Maine and summering in The Berkshires. She is fine art professional with over 25 years of experience in the visual arts, in both the non-profit and private sectors. She is a graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art, first working for the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, planning exhibitions and producing a films on exhibiting artists for the museum. As a MICA alum, she is has served as an adjunct professor and as an advisor for the Curatorial Studies program as a graduate thesis panelist. She has also served on the grants committee for Maryland State Arts Council.

Over her career, Ms. Hatfield has worked with numerous museums in facilitating exhibitions, loans, gifts and acquisitions; including the Musee de Vernon, in France, The Hunter Museum and the The New York Historical Society. She is an advisor for private and family foundation collections, and acted as a founding curator for the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection, which was exhibited at the Portland Art Museum in 2017. In 2020, Ms. Hatfield is co-curating an exhibition for The Art Museum of the Americas in Washington DC.

Ms. Hatfield is the Founder and President of Art Collector's Athenaeum, a unique service that digitizes and researches private art collections for estate planning and art collection management. Her company has digitally catalogued thousands of works of art to support and secure the legacy of fine art collectors for over 10 years. Mrs. Hatfield has presented research for attributions for works by John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. 

In 2017, Art Collector’s Athenaeum, under the direction of Hilary Pierce Hatfield, was contracted to digitize, organize and preserve the private archive of the Onteora Club in the Catskills. The E. Davis Gaillard Archive at Onteora, consists of 1200 objects, including original cottage architectural plans, photographs, glass lantern slides, manuscripts, and signed first editions by Onteora’s illustrious turn of the century authors. In addition, Mrs. Hatfield has consulted with The Trustees to restage rooms in Naumkeag, the historical home of The Choate Family in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, using recently discovered photographic references of the Library and Mabel Choate's bedroom. Most recently, Mrs. Hatfield has lectured for donors to Olana Partnership on the late 19th and Early 20th Century artists and creatives who inhabited the Catskills in the wake of Thomas Cole and Frederic Church. 

Mrs. Hatfield is currently developing an exhibition plan to recreate both the travel and work experience in the late 1800’s Catskill train station in Hunter that served the Catskill Mountain House, a beautifully restored building which is part of the campus of The Mountaintop Historical Society. Mrs. Hatfield’s particular interest in the utopian idea of Onteora is derived from her own childhood growing up on the property of the Belle Époque hotel The Poland Spring House and the idea that art, nature and hospitality combine to provide an essential tonic for the mind and soul.