Guggenheim selects director, first woman to lead museum group
At a time when cultural institutions across the country are struggling to assert themselves in a digital world, and job descriptions for arts leaders have become increasingly complex, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation announced Monday that it Mariët Westermann director and general manager of his museum group. Westermann, the vice chancellor of NYU Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, will be the first woman to lead the museum group, overseeing the Foundation and its flagship institution in New York, as well as its global outposts in Venice, Bilbao and the future. Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
“She ran a major operation abroad,” said the museum’s chairman, J. Tomilson Hill. “She has great credibility in the art world and she will be able to attract and retain exceptional curators and other talented professionals.”
(The other female leader in the museum’s history was Hilla Rebay, one of the founders. She was co-director of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, a predecessor to the Guggenheim, and left in 1952. The Guggenheim was built in 1959. .)
The choice of Westermann, 61, to replace Richard Armstrong, who retired as director last summer, is somewhat of a surprise, as she is not a professional museum director and her name does not typically appear on the list of candidates.
But she is known to many in the art world, having previously served as executive vice president at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which supports cultural institutions; as a former director of NYU Institute of Fine Arts, where art historians, curators and future museum directors have been trained; and as associate director of research at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 2019, she became vice chancellor at NYU Abu Dhabi, where she is also CEO and professor of arts and humanities.
“I know the clarity of her thinking, the care she has for art and artists, and her dedication to the field,” said Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art. “I think she will be an excellent colleague.”
In choosing a university leader as museum chief, the Guggenheim follows the choice of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Daniel H Weiss, president and chief executive officer, who resigned earlier this year; the American Museum of Natural History, which named Sean M. Decatur as its new president last year; and the J. Paul Getty Trust, which last year appointed Katherine E. Fleming as the next president and CEO.
Westermann graduated from Williams College – where she was magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa – and went on to earn a Ph.D. and master’s degree from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. Westermann is an art historian of the Netherlands and publishes books such as ‘A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718’ and ‘Rembrandt – Art and Ideas’.
From June 1, Westermann will fill the position of 14 years at Armstrong. She will move to Manhattan to run the Guggenheim, which now has three satellites in addition to New York: Bilbao, Venice and Abu Dhabi, on Saadiyat Island.
In the meantime, the museum will be led by three of its deputy directors: Naomi Beckwith, the chief curator; Sarah Austrian, the general counsel and secretary; and Marcy Withington, the Chief Financial Officer and acting Chief Operating Officer.
Westermann will take over an institution that is still healing from a period of turmoil, including a 2020 letter from “The Curatorial Department” decrying an “unfair work environment that enables racism”; the departure of a top executive, Nancy Spector, who was later acquitted of discrimination charges; removal of Sackler’s name from an educational center in 2022 after protesters drew attention to that family’s ties to the opioid crisis; and more than two years of negotiating a union contract that was finally ratified last August. The Guggenheim recently temporarily closed its Fifth Avenue entrance a protest in the museum denouncing Israel’s military airstrikes in Gaza.
In addition, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi – designed by Frank Gehry, who also designed the museum’s Bilbao satellite in Spain – has been postponed, partly due to protests over the plight of migrant workers on the project, but is now scheduled to open in 2026.
Westermann said it was too early for her to say anything about Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, “other than to say I was excited to see the building rise so close to me in a truly remarkable neighborhood with institutions of art, natural history, science and culture .”
She added that she was acutely aware of the hurdles of running “four very distinctive museums in four premier buildings in four very dynamic cities.”
“The demands placed on museum directors today are very complex,” she says. “The skills you need for a constellation like the Guggenheim are a challenge and an opportunity that fit well with the kinds of experiences I’ve had.”
Westermann will have the difficult task of getting Guggenheim Abu Dhabi across the finish line and turning that new location into a destination at a time of unrest in the Middle East.
Some in the art world will inevitably lament Guggenheim’s appointment as yet another missed opportunity to appoint a person of color at a time when the world has become more sensitive to the scarcity of black and Latino museum chiefs.
But the Guggenheim has made some progress on diversity, appointing Ashley James as full-time curator in 2019 and Beckwith as deputy director and chief curator in 2021.
And Hill said many of the people considered during the Guggenheim’s search for a new director “were people of color,” adding that the museum had simply decided “the best person for our needs.”
Mellon was one of four funding groups – including the Ford Foundation, the Alice L. Walton Foundation and Pilot House Philanthropy – that launched last May established the Leadership in Art Museums initiative, which has committed more than $11 million to museums to increase racial equity in leadership development.
“Diversity, inclusion and equality are a core responsibility of every organization today,” said Westermann. “It doesn’t matter whether you are a museum, a university, a company or a government agency.”
In conducting its search, the museum has thoroughly examined “what the Guggenheim is, what the Guggenheim could be, what our shortcomings are, what our successes are,” Hill said, likening that process to “getting therapy.”
Hill said he had personally consulted eight people in the field whose opinions he values, including Nicholas Serota, the former director of the Tate in Britain; Laurence des Cars, current director of the Louvre in Paris; Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian; and the art dealer Larry Gagosian.
The Guggenheim decided that the next director needed international experience, but also had to be “someone who was sophisticated in dealing with government agencies,” Hill added, “and who could not only be a spokesperson for our museum, but also handle complex negotiations could handle.
“You need leadership in your work,” he added, “but you also need deep management skills.”
Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation who has worked closely with Westermann, brought up another qualification that he said was essential for the job.
“It takes someone who has global management,” he continued, “and she does that.”
Westermann said her university experience had prepared her well to oversee a complex of four museums in which “the global is already local and the local influences the global.
“I look forward to bringing these locations together,” she added, “so you get a real sense of one Guggenheim.”