NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- E.A. Carmean Jr., a museum curator and director and modern art expert who, responding to a higher calling midway through his career, entered a seminary and became an Episcopal canon, died Oct. 12 at his home in Washington. He was 74.

His family said the cause was cancer.

Carmean, whose primary area of expertise was European and American modernism, worked at several national museums. Most prominently, he was the founding curator of the department of 20th-century art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He joined the gallery in 1974, after only three years at another museum.

At the time, the National Gallery was preparing for an expansion. He worked with the gallery’s director, J. Carter Brown; its chief patron, Paul Mellon; and architect I.M. Pei to finalize plans for the massive triangular-shaped East Building that would hold its modern and contemporary collection.

Carmean was instrumental in commissioning five large works that became familiar presences in the new wing’s atrium, by Alexander Calder, Joan Mirò, Robert Motherwell, Henry Moore and Anthony Caro.

He was also responsible for “American Art at Mid-Century: The Subjects of the Artist,” the inaugural exhibition in the East Building, which opened in 1978. That show was notable for its installation of 13 sculptures from David Smith’s “Voltri” series in a gallery whose stepped platforms echoed the Roman amphitheater at Spoleto, Italy, where the works were made and first exhibited in 1962.

His other exhibitions at the National Gallery included “Braque: The Papiers Collés” and “David Smith,” both in 1982. He also started a series of exhibitions that each highlighted one work in the museum’s collection. He worked personally on “Mondrian: The Diamond Compositions” (1979), “Picasso: The Saltimbanques” (1980) and “Bellows: The Boxing Pictures” (1983).

At the time he joined the National Gallery, Carmean was faced with assembling a modernist collection when such works were becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. During his tenure, the gallery managed to nearly double its modernist holdings.

His most notable acquisition, in 1976, was Jackson Pollock’s “Number 1 1950 (Lavender Mist),”which was considered the last sizable canvas from Pollock’s classic drip paintings in private hands.

Carmean’s catch also included the second version of Arshile Gorky’s “The Artist and His Mother” (from about 1926 to about 1942) as well as important paintings by Matisse, Juan Gris, Lee Krasner, Alma Thomas, André Derain and Frank Stella, and five sculptures by David Smith.

Carmean was born Jan. 25, 1945, in Springfield, Illinois, the son of E.A. Carmean Sr., a telephone executive, and Helen (Marker) Carmean, a homemaker. It was a family tradition not to disclose what the initials E.A. stood for.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in art history, philosophy and theology from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and then pursued graduate study at the University of Illinois for three years, obtaining a master’s in 1971 with a thesis on the work of Robert Motherwell.

That year he joined the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as a curator of 20th-century art. His graduate thesis became the basis for the exhibition and catalog “The Collages of Robert Motherwell” (1973).

The recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, he taught art history over the course of his career at George Washington University, Rice University in Houston, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota and the University of Illinois.

In 1984, after 10 years at the National Gallery, Carmean became director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas,, where he organized “Helen Frankenthaler: A Paintings Retrospective” in 1989. His last museum job was as director of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, in Tennessee, from 1992 to 1997.

In 1998, he spoke to The New York Times about his decision to step down from the museum. “The pressure on museum directors is nonstop,” he said. “The minute you close one blockbuster, you have to open another one.”

But his interest in religion had deepened, and he devoted the next four years to studying at the Memphis Theological Seminary. He later joined the clergy staff of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Germantown, Tennessee, and in 2005 he was appointed lay canon for art and architecture with a license to preach in the West Tennessee Diocese.

In the early 2000s, venerable New York gallery Knoedler & Co. placed Carmean on retainer to research the provenance of several abstract expressionist works that the gallery had sold to collectors. He and art historian Stephen Polcari provided written authentication for some of the works and became enmeshed in a lawsuit claiming that the paintings were fake. The case went to trial in 2016, and Carmean testified, but the parties settled out of court.

Since 2011, when he moved back to Washington, Carmean had been a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, writing on art and religion. He also wrote for other publications. “Looking at Art: Some Sacred, Some Profane,” a book of his selected essays, reviews and sermons, is being prepared for publication.

Carmean was married three times. His first wife, Janet Yantis, died in 1977. His marriage to Martha Adger ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife of 28 years, Kathryn; a daughter from his first marriage, Elizabeth Carmean Adams; and two grandchildren.

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