Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art Advisory Committee

Previously Jayne Wrightsman Curator in the Department of European Paintings, Andrea Bayer is 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. For six years Bayer 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. She has published extensively on twentieth-century Italian art, including the book Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism (2000). She wrote Thomas Hart Benton: The America Today Murals (1985) and was co-curator of The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons (2005, Jewish Museum, New York). Braun was co-curator at the Met of Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection (2014–15). Its catalogue received two prestigious prizes. In 2016 she organized Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting, at the Guggenheim, again with an award- winning catalogue. She co-curated the major show Cubism and the Trompe l'Oeil Tradition (2022-23) at the Met.

© 2023 MMA, photo by Eileen Travell

David Breslin 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. Before his arrival at The Met in 2022, he was the Whitney Museum of American Art’s DeMartini Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives, helping to 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. He has a Ph.D. from Harvard.

Harry Cooper studied painting and drawing at the Corcoran Museum School and wrote his Ph.D. on Piet Mondrian. Cooper joined the National Gallery in 2008 after a decade at Harvard Art Museums. 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 retrospective of Philip Guston, concluded its tour at Tate Modern in 2023-24. 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 edited; and "Braque's Ovals" in Picasso & Braque: The Cubist Experiment (Santa Barbara Art Museum, 2011).

Alongside her role in Modern and Contemporary Art, Stephanie D’Alessandro (Ph.D Chicago) was the Curator in Charge of the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art from 2017-2021. Before joining the Met in 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, and artists such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

© 2017, photo by Brooke Hummer Photography

A Fellow of the British Academy, Green’s publications include Cubism and its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916-1928 (1987); Art in France 1900-1940 (2000); and Picasso: Architecture and Vertigo (2005). He has curated many 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); and Cubism and War: The Crystal in the Flame (Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 2016). His next book is Cubism and Reality: Braque, Picasso, Gris (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2025). He is co-curating an exhibition on Henri Rousseau with the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, and the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris (2025-26).

Gennifer Weisenfeld’s field of research is modern and contemporary Japanese art history, design, and visual culture. She is author of four major books: Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931 (University of California Press, 2002); Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 (University of California Press, 2012, Japanese edition Seidosha, 2014); Gas Mask Nation: Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Her forthcoming book on the history of Japanese commercial art and design, The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan appears in 2025 (Duke University Press).