Andrew Sears has been assistant curator of northern European paintings at the National Gallery of Art since 2023, contributing to the acquisition, study, and display of 15th- and 16th-century German, Austrian, Franco-Flemish, and Netherlandish paintings. He is cocurator of Broken: The Power of the Fragment in Sculpture (2027) and was previously David E. Finley Fellow at the museum’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.

Prior to his current role, Sears was a postdoctoral researcher in the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project “The Inheritance of Looting: Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums,” based between the University of Bern and the Bern Historical Museum. He has held fellowships at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence and the Berlin State Museums, where he was a curatorial assistant for the exhibition Beyond Compare: Art from Africa in the Bode Museum (2017–2019). Sears has also worked at the Dallas Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and The Met Cloisters in New York.  

Sears holds a PhD in art history and medieval studies from the University of California (UC), Berkeley, where his dissertation investigated the commodification of religious artworks in the context of northern Europe's mercantile expansion between 1250 and 1550. He also holds an MA from UC Berkeley and a BA from Emory University, both in art history.