Mark D. Mitchell is the Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery. He earned a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, followed by an M.A. and then Ph.D. from Princeton University.

While completing his doctorate, Mitchell joined the Princeton University Art Museum and published the first monographic study of landscape painter Francis A. Silva (1835–1886). After graduation, he moved to the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, then the National Academy Museum in New York City, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art as Associate Curator of American Art and Manager of the Center for American Art. Since 2015, he has been with the Yale University Art Gallery in his current position.

Some of his recent exhibition-related publications include “The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876–1917” (2024), “William Bailey: Looking through Time” (2019), and “Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life”  (2015). His research interests in American art extend from the colonial period to the later twentieth century in all media, with particular depth in landscape and still life painting.