Joel Smith received a Ph.D. from Princeton in 2000. His publications include Edward Steichen: The Early Years (1999), Steinberg at The New Yorker (2005), and a catalogue for the traveling retrospective exhibition Saul Steinberg: Illuminations (2006). He has organized exhibitions on language in twentieth-century art, wit and humor in photography, and the transmission of visual motifs through art, as well as monographic exhibitions of photographers including Andreas Feininger and Fazal Sheikh. He is currently researching the history of photographs of nothing for an exhibition scheduled to open at the Museum in 2011.