Associate Curator for the Ancient Near East
Antonietta Catanzariti is Associate Curator for the Ancient Near East at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. She joined in 2016 as a fellow and served as the Robert and Arlene Kogod Secretarial Scholar from 2018 to 2022. Catanzariti received her BA and MA from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy, and a PhD in the art and archaeology of the ancient Near East from the University of California, Berkeley. She is an active archaeologist and has excavated in Italy, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Since 2015, she has been the director of the Qara Dagh Regional Archaeological Project (QDRAP), which conducts surveys and excavations in the Qara Dagh Valley, Iraqi Kurdistan.
A specialist in the ceramic economy and art of the ancient Near East, Catanzariti is interested in the impact of landscape and trade routes on the formation and interactions of ancient communities. Catanzariti has lectured on topics related to the ancient Near East’s ceramic economy and her excavation projects. Since her arrival at the Freer and Sackler, she has served as the in-house curator for Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt (2017) and curated Shaping Clay in Ancient Iran (2018), Ancient Yemen: Incense, Art and Trade (2022), and A Collector’s Eye: Freer in Egypt (2023).