The National Gallery of Art in Washington announced the appointment of Andrew Sears as assistant curator of Northern European paintings. He will begin his post on 28 August 2023.

Sears is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project “The Inheritance of Looting: Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums,” based between the University of Bern and the Bern Historical Museum. In his new role at the National Gallery, Sears will contribute to the acquisition, study, and display of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German, Austrian, Franco-Flemish, and Netherlandish paintings.

Prior to his current work in Switzerland, Sears was a David E. Finley Fellow at the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, conducting doctoral research and contributing to the work of the National Gallery’s department of Northern European paintings. He has also held fellowships at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence and the Berlin State Museums, where he was a curatorial assistant for the exhibition Beyond Compare: Art from Africa in the Bode Museum (2017–2019). Sears has also worked at the Dallas Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and The Met Cloisters in New York. Sears received a PhD in art history and medieval studies from the University of California (UC), Berkeley, where his dissertation investigated the commodification of religious artworks in the context of Northern Europe’s mercantile expansion between 1250 and 1550. He also holds an MA from UC Berkeley and a BA from Emory University, both in art history.