Washington, DC—The National Gallery of Art announced today that Harry Cooper, head of the department of modern and contemporary art, will step down after 16 years in the role. Cooper will remain on our staff in a newly endowed position, the Bunny Mellon Curator of Modern Art, thanks to the generous gift of the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation.

As the inaugural Bunny Mellon Curator of Modern Art, Cooper will oversee paintings and sculptures from the first decades of the 20th century as well as later works that engage with the legacies of modernism. Among other projects, he will continue to steward the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, a world-class assemblage of postwar American art. Cooper will also focus on expanding our stellar collection of early modernism, both European and American, to embrace underrepresented artists and movements. Molly Donovan, curator of contemporary art, will serve as acting head of modern and contemporary art.

For years Cooper has shared his excitement about art with visitors and staff alike. “I have loved my time leading the department of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery,” he said. “Some of my proudest work has been as a mentor and facilitator, encouraging the talents of colleagues and, in recent years, implementing our new mission, vision, and values. I look forward to focusing on deep curatorial work, including an upcoming retrospective of the American artist Helen Frankenthaler.”

“As head of modern and contemporary art, Harry has put an indelible and unique mark on the National Gallery, for which we will be forever grateful,” said director Kaywin Feldman. “From his role in acquiring incredible new works for the nation’s collection to his help developing our East Building’s signature Towers, creating dedicated spaces there for the beloved works of Alexander Calder, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko, Harry has been integral to our growth, and we eagerly await his contributions in this new role.”

Cooper’s Career as Department Head

During his tenure at the National Gallery, Cooper has acquired more than 500 works of art and presented some 40 exhibitions on behalf of the museum. He curated or cocurated several of these, including The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works (2009), In the Tower: Nam June Paik (2011), Stuart Davis: In Full Swing (2016), Oliver Lee Jackson: Recent Paintings (2019), Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South (2022), and Philip Guston Now (2023). When the East Building galleries reopened in 2016 after several years of renovation and expansion, Cooper reimagined the permanent collection as a continuous historical narrative with explanatory texts in an acclaimed installation that remains on view today.

Cooper has overseen the acquisition of numerous important collections, including German expressionist painting and sculpture from Arnold and Joan Saltzman, avant-garde American and European art of the 1960s and beyond from Virginia Dwan, contemporary art from the 1970s onward from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, African American art of the South, including Gee’s Bend quilts, from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, African American modern art from P. Bruce Marine and Donald Hardy, and, most recently, a world-class collection of Joseph Cornell boxes and collages from Robert and Aimee Lehrman. As for individual works, many acquired by the Collectors Committee, Cooper brought the National Gallery our first paintings by Cecily Brown, Simon Hantaï, Oliver Lee Jackson, Alex Katz, Norman Lewis, Yoshitomo Nara, Amy Sillman, Marjorie Strider, Joaquín Torres-García, Lee Ufan, and Jack Whitten, and our first sculptures by Thornton Dial, Sonia Gomes, Henri Matisse, John McCracken, Mario Merz, and Kiki Smith.

Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art 

The modern and contemporary art collection was formally established with the creation in 1974 of the department of 20th-century art and the founding of the Collectors Committee a year later to commission works for I. M. Pei’s highly anticipated East Building. The structure opened in 1978 with a newly acquired masterpiece, Jackson Pollock’s Lavender Mist, and iconic large-scale commissions by artists such as Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, and Robert Motherwell.

During the 1980s and 1990s, transformative gifts of works by Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman and the acquisition of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel’s collection of postminimal and conceptual art propelled our holdings into world-class status. The 1999 opening of the Sculpture Garden, funded by The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, prepared the way for further acquisitions of contemporary sculpture, both indoors and outdoors, by Andy Goldsworthy, Roxy Paine, Richard Serra, Leo Villareal, Rachel Whiteread, Christopher Wool, and others that together represented a public declaration of our interest in contemporary art.

In 2013 the National Gallery received an outright and promised gift from Virginia Dwan of minimal, postminimal, and land art from the 1960s and 1970s. In 2020 we acquired 40 works from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation by 21 African American artists from the southern United States and Target (1992) by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, our first painting by a Native American artist. These were followed in 2021 by the acquisition of Faith Ringgold’s The Flag is Bleeding, a landmark painting from the civil rights era, and in 2023 we acquired the towering bronze Sentinel by Simone Leigh, the first Black woman to represent the US at the Venice Biennale. Our collection has broadened further over the last several years to include more work by contemporary Native American artists and a gift of 15 artworks by modern and contemporary Haitian artists from two important collections, those of Kay and Roderick Heller and Beverly and John Fox Sullivan.

In response to the remarkable growth of the collection and the evolution of our strategic priorities, the department has grown significantly. In 2021 Kanitra Fletcher became the first associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic art, and Natalia Ángeles Vieyra has just been hired as associate curator of Latinx art. These positions are important as we continue to expand our collection beyond canonical artists to include more contemporary art and greater diversity across many dimensions.

Bunny Mellon and the National Gallery of Art

Soon after their marriage in 1948, Paul Mellon and Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon began to acquire paintings for their personal collection. Paul later wrote: “We began going to public galleries and those of dealers in New York and abroad—out of interest, out of curiosity—for pleasure, relaxation, education.” Bunny’s influence was not only apparent in their collecting—she introduced Paul to 19th-century French painting—but was also felt for more than 50 years here at the National Gallery in elegant special events and visits from celebrities, dignitaries, and world leaders. As the East Building was being constructed in the 1970s as the historic gift of Paul Mellon, he and Bunny began to give the museum individual works from the collection that they had assembled. Over time the pace of the gifts accelerated. In all, Paul and Bunny Mellon gave or bequeathed to the National Gallery more than 1,000 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, an extraordinary record of generosity.

Gerard B. Lambert Foundation

The Gerard B. Lambert Foundation honors the legacy, values, and interests of Bunny Mellon by supporting charitable and educational organizations that reflect Mrs. Mellon’s lifelong commitment to human well-being and the improvement of the lives of individuals through knowledge and beauty. In furtherance of its mission, the foundation’s grants primarily focus on horticulture, conservation and sustainability, the arts, historic preservation, childhood education, healthcare, and disaster relief. Bunny Mellon established the foundation to honor her father, Gerard Barnes Lambert (1886–1967), for his lifetime accomplishments in business and the arts.

The Gerard B. Lambert Foundation honors the legacy, values, and interests of Bunny Mellon by supporting charitable and educational organizations that reflect Mrs. Mellon’s lifelong commitment to human well-being and the improvement of the lives of individuals through knowledge and beauty. In furtherance of its mission, the foundation’s grants primarily focus on horticulture, conservation and sustainability, the arts, historic preservation, childhood education, healthcare, and disaster relief. Bunny Mellon established the foundation to honor her father, Gerard Barnes Lambert (1886–1967), for his lifetime accomplishments in business and the arts.