Known as an influential proponent of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, curator Nan Rosenthal passed away at her home in Manhattan on April 27 at age 76.

Rosenthal began her career as a journalist in New York and London. She became the 20th-century art curator at the National Gallery in 1985 and, with curator Jack Cowart, pushed to acquire major works by modern masters like Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg and others. Her 1990 retrospective of drawings by Jasper Johns was a landmark exhibition.

In 1993, Rosenthal left for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art where she curated well-remembered exhibitons, including: Willem de Kooning’s paintings (1994), Jackson Pollock’s drawings (1997-98), prints by Chuck Close (2004) and mixed-media works by Rauschenberg (2005-06).

She retired in 2008 after a last exhibition focusing on the work of Johns whom she descirbed in a PBS interview as the greatest living artist in the U.S. 

Rosenthal is survived by her husband Henry Cortesi.