A native of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, Rogers was educated at Oakham School and later went on to receive degrees from Magdalen College, and Christ Church of the University of Oxford, where he earned a B.A. with first class honors and a D.Phil. in English.
In 1999, Rogers helped launch the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Nagoya, Japan as a sister museum in order to internationalize the museum's brand.