The National Gallery of Art announced yesterday that Andaleeb Badiee Banta will join the museum as Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings and will assume the role on 12 January 2025.

Banta will lead the department of prints and drawings, which is responsible for the care, study, display, and expansion of the National Gallery’s collection of some 120,000 works on paper. Making up the majority of the National Gallery’s overall holdings, the extensive collection includes prints, drawings, artists’ books, and ephemera from Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world. It spans the medieval, Renaissance, and baroque periods as well as the eighteenth century to the present day.

She joins the National Gallery from the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), where she is senior curator and head of the department of prints, drawings, and photographs, a position she has held since 2018. She returns to the National Gallery after having previously served as assistant curator of drawings and prints at the museum from 2010 to 2013.

Banta, a member of CODART since 2013, is a specialist in European Renaissance and Baroque art on paper. She has curated exhibitions of prints and drawings covering periods from the Renaissance to the present day. Banta’s curatorial focus is on crafting narratives that cross chronological periods and highlight underrepresented artists. In her most recent role at the BMA, she curated the critically acclaimed exhibition Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400–1800. She holds a PhD and MA in the history of art from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and a BA in the history of art from Vassar College.