Sarah Cash has been associate curator of American and British paintings at the National Gallery of Art worked since 2014. She also currently serves as acting head of American and British paintings.  

While at the National Gallery, Cash has cocurated Niagara Falls: Mist and Majesty (2026) and Sargent and Spain (2022). She organized Sargent and Spain in collaboration with Elaine Kilmurray and Richard Ormond, codirectors of the John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonné. Cash also curated an expanded presentation of the museum's American galleries in commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary. She has also overseen and assisted with numerous projects involving the transition of the Corcoran Collection to the National Gallery of Art. Cash also held an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Sabbatical Fellowship (2024–2025) from the National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts to research John Singer Sargent’s stereographs.

Prior to joining the National Gallery, Cash was curator of American art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, director of the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, and assistant curator at the Amon Carter Museum. She has also held positions at Yale University Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. During her 16 years at the Corcoran, Cash completed the first modern scholarly catalog of the Corcoran’s American paintings collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (2011). She organized the major international traveling exhibition Sargent and the Sea (2009–2010) and edited its accompanying catalog. Cash organized the loan exhibitions Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art (2005–2007); Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms: Paintings that Inspired a Nation (2004); and Albert Bierstadt’s California Scenery, Sunset View (2003). She also organized many exhibitions from the Corcoran’s permanent collection, including The Gilded Cage: Views of American Women, 1873–1921 (2002), and coordinated the Corcoran’s presentation of numerous major traveling exhibitions.

Cash holds an MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art and a BA in Smith College, both in the history of art.