Sarah Kennel, PhD
Associate Curator in the Department of Photographs (2004–2015)
Sarah Kennel was associate curator in the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art until 2015. She holds a PhD in art history from the University of California, Berkeley, completing her dissertation on the relationship between dance and the visual arts in early 20th-century Paris. After a Mary Davis Predoctoral Fellowship at the National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts from 1999-2001, Kennel was a contributor for The Art of Romare Bearden (2003) and then joined the department of photographs where she has contributed to numerous shows, including André Kertész (2005), Irving Penn: The Platinum Prints (2005), and The Art of the American Snapshot (2007). She has also curated or co-curated Paris in Transition: Photographs from the National Gallery of Art (2006); In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet (2008); In the Darkoom: Photographic Processes before the Digital Age (2009), and The Serial Portrait: Photography and Identity in the Last One Hundred Years (2012); and Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris. She has taught classes in the history of art at the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University and is currently an adjunct professor at George Washington University.