WASHINGTON, DC.- The National Gallery of Art announced today that Andaleeb Badiee Banta will join the museum as Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings and will assume the role on January 12, 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, this world-class 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 through the 18th to the 21st centuries and includes sizable holdings of postwar American works on paper. The collection also contains significant holdings of works on paper by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, William Blake, Mary Cassatt, Edvard Munch, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Winslow Homer, and Georgia O’Keeffe.
In leading the prints and drawings division, Banta will play a vital part in implementing strategies to build and expand the collection. She will also shepherd thought-provoking exhibitions and relevant collection displays that reflect and attract the nation as well as deepen our appreciation of the key role of prints and drawings in artistic expression and art history.
Banta 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.
“I am thrilled to welcome Andaleeb back to the National Gallery of Art. Through her acquisitions, exhibitions, and audience-centered work—which spans her expertise in early modern European art and has grown through her curatorial practice to include modern and contemporary art—Andaleeb has demonstrated her strong scholarship, boundless creativity, and commitment to expanding audiences and the boundaries of art history,” said E. Carmen Ramos, chief curatorial and conservation officer at the National Gallery of Art. “Her commitment to collaboration will inspire our talented curators and staff to broaden the stories we tell and the ways in which we tell them, helping to bring our collections to life for contemporary audiences. I know she will be the partner and leader the National Gallery needs as we move forward as an institution.”
“I’m honored to join the accomplished staff of the National Gallery, whose collection of works on paper is one of the finest in this country and offers unparalleled opportunities to connect audiences with art from all periods through compelling and diverse narratives,” said Banta. “I am particularly interested in exploring ways to foreground public engagement with the collection and illustrate its central role in the history of artistic creativity. I look forward to working alongside the National Gallery’s stellar team and helping to foster the public’s understanding and exploration of this extraordinary collection.”
A specialist in Renaissance and baroque art of Europe, Banta brings to the National Gallery an expertise in old master works 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. The exhibition’s catalog received the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender Collaborative Project award, among other accolades.
Prior to the BMA, she was curator of European and American art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. She has also held curatorial and research positions at the Morgan Library and Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Banta has published and presented extensively on numerous European artists of the 16th and 17th centuries. In 2017 she co-authored the exhibition catalog Lines of Inquiry: Learning from Rembrandt’s Etchings, which received the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award from the College Art Association. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fulbright Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome.
Banta 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.
The National Gallery of Art Prints and Drawings Collection
The National Gallery of Art’s collection of prints and drawings includes some 120,000 works on paper. Making up nearly 80 percent of the National Gallery’s overall holdings, the 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 through the 18th to the 21st centuries and includes sizable holdings of postwar American works on paper. The collection also contains significant holdings of works on paper by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, William Blake, Mary Cassatt, Edvard Munch, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Winslow Homer, and Georgia O’Keeffe.
This collection has expanded rapidly since it was established in 1941. Its first sizable addition occurred in 1942 with the donation of the entire collection held by Joseph E. Widener. The nearly 2,000 works included a group of Rembrandt drawings and 350 designs for French 18th-century book illustrations. In 1943 Lessing J. Rosenwald initiated the most significant gift to the collection. Over the course of 36 years, he donated his collection of 22,000 old master and modern prints and drawings, including medieval miniatures and drawings by Rembrandt, Nanteuil, Daumier, Blake, Whistler, and Cassatt.
Through the founding of the Gemini G.E.L. Archive at the National Gallery in 1981, the Graphicstudio U.S.F. Archive in 1986, and the Crown Point Press Archive, the museum has become a leading repository of contemporary prints. The National Gallery also acquired Jasper Johns’s own archive of over 1,700 trial proofs, working proofs, and related material from his lifelong engagement in making original prints. In 2023, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives (BWA) in Philadelphia, the National Gallery acquired a selection of more than 100 prints created there by 50 artists over its 50-year history. This acquisition added works by 39 new artists to the National Gallery’s holdings, including Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations), Juan Sánchez, E. J. Montgomery, and Sam Gilliam.
