Melissa Venator, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of Modern Art

Melissa Venator is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of Modern Art.

She joined the museum in 2019 as a postdoctoral fellow and is the author of “German Expressionism: Paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum” (Hirmer, 2024). She works on the museum’s world-class collection of 20th-century German art and specializes in the European avant-garde. Venator assisted Min Jung Kim, the museum’s Barbara B. Taylor Director, in the curation of the 2025 exhibition “Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea.”

Venator was previously the Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard Art Museums, where she curated exhibitions on Hans Arp and Carl Grossberg and contributed to a major Bauhaus centennial exhibition. Her dissertation examined the emergence of electric light art in Germany in the 1920s. As a museum-based scholar, she has collaborated extensively with conservators to present the material histories of art.

Venator holds a doctorate from Rice University, a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and undergraduate degrees in art history and Plan II from the University of Texas at Austin. She also has master’s degrees in arts administration and business administration from Southern Methodist University.