Peter Galassi assumed his current position at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1991, but has worked there steadily since 1974. He has organized more than 30 exhibitions for The Museum of Modern Art, many of which were accompanied by publications authored or co-authored by Galassi, and that have toured nationally and internationally. They include Aleksandr Rodchenko, Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective, Pictures of the Times: A Century of Photography from The New York Times, and Pleasures and Terror of Domestic Comfort. Other notable exhibitions curated by Galassi include Cindy Sherman: The Complete Untitled Film Stills, Michael Schmidt: U-ni-ty, and Lee Friedlander: Letters from the People.

In 2001, Galassi acquired for The Museum of Modern Art more than 300 works from the Thomas Walther collection, widely recognized as the pre-eminent private collection of modernist photography, which includes outstanding works by virtually every leading European and American photographer of the 1920s and 1930s. In 2000, he spearheaded the major acquisition of 1,000 works by Lee Friedlander that span the artist's career, and in 1991, he began an acquisitions program focused on postwar photography.

Peter Galassi earned his B.S. degree from Harvard College in 1972 and a doctorate in art history from Columbia University in 1986. He was twice a fellow in the Department of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was awarded the Eric Mitchell Prize and the Governor's Award of Yale University in 1992, and the International Center of Photography award for excellence in writing in 1988.

SITE Santa Fe's Art & Culture series is partially supported by Lannan Foundation, LLWW Foundation, Madelin Coit and Alan Levin, Bobbie Foshay-Miller and Chuck Miller, and Marlene Nathan Meyerson.