Ambreen Butt (b. 1969 Pakistan) was trained in the tradition of Persian miniature painting in her native country of Pakistan. Her work expands on this format of the ancient technique and combines intimately scaled imagery on overlaid sheets of Mylar and paper which are often stitched. Butt's work examines issues of contemporary culture through the lens of an Islamic woman living in the western world. Presenting the woman as heroine, she creates oblique narratives that are both autobiographical and universal. Her work addresses themes of war, violence and oppression as well as more private concerns of identity, desire and awakening.

Butt was the first recipient of the James and Audrey Foster Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in1999. She has also been the recipient of the Maud Morgan Prize from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Joan Mitchel Foundation Award and a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Her work is in several major private collections and has been exhibited at Anna Kustera Gallery, NY, Bernard Toale gallery, Boston, Flemming Museum University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, MA, Brooklyn Museum, NY, Asia Pacific Museum, Pasadena, CA, Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, The Drawing Center, NY and the National Art Gallery; Islamabad, Pakistan. She received her BFA at the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan and her MFA at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA. Ambreen Butt currently lives and works in Lincoln, MA.

During her residency in October 1999, Ambreen Butt opened her studio at the Gardner Museum to the public. This was the first and only time visitors, staff, and guests, were invited to ascend the stairs of the Carriage House to the Artist-in-Residence apartment. They were able to speak to the artist and view her work. Butt spent many hours wandering in the galleries, doing research into the collection, and looking at ephemera in the archives. Later she incorporated a painted terracotta work of the Virgin and Child, ca. 1495, from the Long Gallery into a mixed media painting in her Farewell series.

In 2000, Butt returned to the Gardner as a "Host" of The Living Room, a work by artist Lee Mingwei in the Special Exhibition Gallery. Lee, who also had been an Artist-in-Residence in 1999, created a salon in the Special Exhibition Gallery and invited individual members of the museum "family"–staff, past AIRs, and volunteers, trustees–to host his installation and to talk about the objects they had brought in from their own homes. As a host, Ambreen Butt spent her time painting and talking to visitors and displayed several of her finished paintings and works in progress. She returned again in 2005 to give a Noontime Talk in the Tapestry Room about her exhibition, I Need a Hero, at the Kustera Tilton Gallery, New York, and other upcoming projects.