Andrea Nelson is associate curator in the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art where she has worked since 2010.

Nelson came to the National Gallery as a graduate curatorial intern in 2007 and later held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Modern Art at the Phillips Collection. She has published essays on German and American photography books, as well as on photographers Dorothea Lange and Yamazawa Eiko. At the National Gallery, she has organized several exhibitions, including The ‘70s Lens: Reimagining Documentary Photography (2024), The New Woman Behind the Camera (2021); Richard Mosse: Incoming (cocurator, 2019), The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs from the National Gallery of Art Acquired with the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund (cocurator, 2015); and A Subtle Beauty: Platinum Photographs from the Collection (2014). Nelson also serves as cochair of the museum’s Time-based Media Art Working Group. In addition to her curatorial work, she has taught courses on writing for the decorative arts, modern and contemporary art, and the history of photography.

Nelson received her PhD from the University of Minnesota, focusing on 20th-century art and the history of photography.