Advisory Committee

Appointed the Museum’s Deputy Director for Collections and Administration in October 2018, Andrea Bayer was previously the Jayne Wrightsman Curator in the Department of European Paintings. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1990, and has been on the staff of The Met since that time.

An expert on Italian Renaissance art, she has worked on a range of exhibitions, both thematic investigations—such as Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy (2004) and Art and Love in Renaissance Italy (2008–9)—and monographic shows on artists such as Giambattista Tiepolo, Dosso Dossi, and Antonello da Messina. Her most recent exhibitions include Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, one of the inaugural exhibitions at The Met Breuer. She was a curator in European Paintings from 2007 to 2018, and, in 2014, became the Jayne Wrightsman Curator. Outside the department, Bayer served as Interim Deputy Director for Collections and Administration (May–October 2018), Interim Head of Education (2008–9), and for six years was coordinating curator for the Curatorial Studies program run jointly by the Museum and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. She is currently co-chairman of the Director’s Exhibition Committee.

Emily Braun has served as the Curator of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection since 1987. In addition to her writings on Cubism, she has published extensively on twentieth-century Italian art, including her book Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism (2000) She is also the author of Thomas Hart Benton: The America Today Murals (1985) and co-curator of The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons (2005, Jewish Museum, New York) and co-author of its catalogue, which received a National Jewish Book Award. Her fellowships include a residency at the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Braun was co-curator at the Met of Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection (2014–15). Its catalogue received The Association of Art Museum Curators’ First Place Award for Excellence and the New York State Historical Association’s Henry Allen Moe Prize. In 2016 she organized Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Braun also authored its publication, which was recognized with the 2016 Dedalus Foundation Exhibition Catalogue Award. Most recently, Braun co-curated Cubism and the Trompe l'Oeil Tradition (2022-23) at the Met.

© 2023 MMA, photograph by Eileen Travell

David Breslin was appointed the Leonard A. Lauder Curator in Charge of Modern and Contemporary in 2022. He joined The Met’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at a pivotal moment as it began planning and implementing the renovation of the Oscar L. and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art. Prior to the Met, Breslin served as the Whitney Museum of American Art’s DeMartini Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives, having previously served as Curator and Director of the Collection. As the Whitney’s first Director of Curatorial Initiatives, Breslin helped develop new programs, including an Indigenous Artists Working Group. As a curator, he has worked on shows such as “An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections From the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017” and “David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night.” He recently was the co-curator for the 2022 Whitney Biennial: Quiet as It's Kept. Breslin earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Amherst College, a master’s in art history from Williams College and a Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University.

A native of the DC region, Harry Cooper studied painting and drawing at the Corcoran Museum School and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1997 with a dissertation on Piet Mondrian. Cooper curated at the Harvard Art Museums for a decade before joining the National Gallery in 2008. He has organized or co-organized exhibitions on Mondrian, Medardo Rosso, Frank Stella, Stuart Davis, Oliver Jackson, and Black self-taught artists of the American South, and has taught at Harvard, Columbia University, and Johns Hopkins. His latest exhibition, a retrospective of Philip Guston, concludes its tour at Tate Modern in 2023-24. Cooper's publications include “Decoding Gris" in Cubism in Color (Dallas Museum of Art, 2021); The Cubism Seminars, CASVA Seminar Papers 3 (National Gallery of Art, 2017), which he introduced and edited; and "Braque's Ovals" in Picasso & Braque: The Cubist Experiment (Santa Barbara Art Museum, 2011). 

In addition to her role in the department of Modern and Contemporary Art, from 2017-2021, Stephanie D’Alessandro was also the Curator in Charge of the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art. Before joining the Met in May 2017, D’Alessandro was the Art Institute of Chicago’s Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of International Modern Art. She has organized such major exhibitions as Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917 (2010), Picasso and Chicago (2013), Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 (2014), Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil (2017), as well Surrealism Beyond Borders (2021-22). Her many publications include topics on German and Latin American modernism, Surrealism, as well as many artists, including Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. D’Alessandro received her B.A. from Dickinson College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

© 2017, photograph by Brooke Hummer Photography

Gennifer Weisenfeld's field of research is modern and contemporary Japanese art history, design, and visual culture. Her first book, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931 (University of California Press, 2002) addresses the relationship between high art and mass culture in the aesthetic politics of the avant-garde in 1920s Japan. Her second book, Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 (University of California Press, 2012, Japanese edition Seidosha, 2014) examines how visual culture has mediated the historical understanding of Japan’s worst national disaster of the twentieth century. Her third book, Gas Mask Nation: Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2023) explores the anxious pleasures of Japanese visual culture during World War II. She has published extensively on the history of Japanese design, including a core essay for MIT’s award-winning website Visualizing Cultureson the Shiseido cosmetic company’s advertising design. She has a forthcoming book on the history of Japanese commercial art and design titled The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan (Duke University Press).

Christopher Green is Emeritus Professor in the History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art and a Fellow of the British Academy. Green’s scholarship on modernism, and Cubism in particular, has produced numerous publications, including Cubism and its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916-1928 (1987), which won the Mitchel Prize for a book on 20th Century art; Art in France 1900-1940 (2000); and Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo (2005). He has also curated several recent exhibitions: Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris (Tate Modern, 2005); Objetos vivos: Figura y natura muerta en Picasso (Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 2008); Modern Antiquity: Picasso, de Chirico, Léger, Picabia (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011); Mondrian/Nicholson: In Parallel (The Courtauld Gallery, 2012); and Cubism and War: The Crystal in the Flame (Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 2016). At the Research Center, Professor Green, advanced work towards his forthcoming book Cubism and Reality: Braque, Picasso, Gris, to be published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts in 2025. He is also currently co-curating an exhibition with the working title ‘Henri Rousseau’s Secrets’ with the Barnes Foundation and the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, scheduled to open in Philadelphia in Fall 2025, and Paris in January 2026.