James Meyer has been curator of modern art at the National Gallery of Art since 2017.

Meyer is a specialist in late 20th century and contemporary art. He is the author of The Art of Return: The Sixties and Contemporary Culture (2019) and Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties (2001) and has edited several books. He most recently curated The Double: Identity and Difference in Art Since 1900 (2022) at the National Gallery of Art.

Meyer was previously chief curator and deputy director at Dia Art Foundation, as well as the Winship Distinguished Research Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University. He has also taught at Johns Hopkins University and Northwestern University, and was the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor at Williams College. His research has been supported by the Smithsonian Institution, the Clark Research Institute, and the Getty Research Institute. Before his time at Dia, he was associate curator of modern art at the National Gallery, where he organized shows on the work of Mel Bochner and Kerry James Marshall, and the exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery 1959-1971, on the history of the famed gallerist and collector Virginia Dwan.

Meyer holds a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, an MA from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and a BA from Yale University.