Prior to his role as Director of the MFA, Rogers worked his way up from Librarian and Archivist to Deputy Director at the National Portrait Gallery in London. An expert on 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-century portraiture, he has published on painting in England in the 17th century, notably on Anthony van Dyck and William Dobson, as well as on portrait photography, and London and its museums. In 1993 he was passed over for the position of Director of the National Portrait Gallery, and in the following year was appointed the Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he remained until his retirement in 2015.