Dr. Mariet Westermann for Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum & Foundation
The lights are on at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Dr. Mariet Westermann, Vice Chancellor of NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), has been appointed as Director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, to direct its flagship institution in New York and oversee the Foundation and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, while providing collaborative leadership working with the directors of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
Dr. Westermann joins the Guggenheim with a proven track record of successfully leading world-renowned organisations in higher education and philanthropy, dedicated to the arts and humanities.
She combines a knowledge of art history, museums, and research with expertise in institutional management, philanthropy and international relations and has led NYUAD, a degree-granting liberal arts and research campus of NYU, as Vice Chancellor, Chief Executive, and Professor of Arts and Humanities since 2019. Earlier, she was a founder of the institution as its Provost, 2007 - 2010. At NYUAD, she has overseen academic, administrative, financial, and operational affairs. An art historian by training, she is regarded as an innovative and empathetic leader who inspires excellence, manages complexity, and one who brings a deep understanding of how art, culture, and the humanities play a critical role in an globally interconnected but often polarised world.
Under Dr. Westermann’s leadership, NYUAD reached its full undergraduate scale, recruited dozens of new faculty including Wole Soyinka, the university’s first Nobel Laureate, and developed new programmes, including an MFA in visual art and media and an MBA to be offered with NYU’s Stern School of Business. She made the university an anchor institution for innovation, culture, intellectual exchange, and community engagement in the UAE and the broader MENA region.
She helped develop NYU Abu Dhabi’s first Climate Action Plan, a concrete and realistic roadmap to carbon neutrality by 2050. Reporting to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees as Director and CEO of the Guggenheim, Dr. Westermann will oversee and direct the Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and will be the Foundation’s head steward of its seminal collections and its constellation of museums in Europe and Abu Dhabi. Dr. Westermann officially joins the Guggenheim on June 1, 2024.
J. Tomilson Hill, Chair of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Board of Trustees, remarked: “We cast a very wide net and interviewed extensively to identify the right person for the Guggenheim at this time … We evaluated each candidate based on those attributes. Dr. Westermann brings a unique set of qualities and experiences to this critical role — a wide ranging world view, experience in navigating multiple stakeholders and critical issues across geographies, all rooted in a deeply held belief in scholarship, excellence, and the power of arts and culture to inspire and connect.”
Wendy Fisher, President of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Board of Trustees, said that “from Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic building on Fifth Avenue, the Guggenheim has always sought to provoke new ways of thinking about and interacting with art, and Dr. Westermann’s impressive background makes her uniquely qualified to do just that.” Dr. Westermann remarked: “Building and leading NYU Abu Dhabi in this dynamic crossroads of the world, with such diverse, talented and driven colleagues and students, has been extraordinarily inspiring. I will take much of what I learned along the way to the Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. Each of the museums exists to create opportunities for anyone to engage with the transformative and connective power of art and artists, from New York to Bilbao to Venice to Abu Dhabi.”
Dr. Westermann is a graduate, magna cum laude, of Williams College and holds masters and PhD degrees in the History of Art from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. She has received fellowships, honours and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Philosophical Society, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Clark Art Institute, College Art Association, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2020, she co-convened Reframing Museums, a major international conference on the future of museums, organised with NYUAD and Louvre Abu Dhabi. In 2010, on behalf of the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute, she co-hosted Art Museums Here and Now, a conference with museum director Philippe de Montebello, on what it means to build art museums in countries that have not had them or reinvent traditional art museums to stay connected to their changing societies.
She serves on the boards of ALIPH, The International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas, the Educational Testing Service, and the Rijksmuseum, and chairs the Scholar Rescue Fund of the Institute of International Education. In Abu Dhabi, she is a board member of AmCham Abu Dhabi and the US-UAE Business Council. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1937. An architectural icon where radical art and architecture meet, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is among a group of eight Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the United States recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The museum building’s design was controversial when it was completed, but was widely praised afterward. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a work of contemporary architecture and the building has been hailed as a “signal moment in the architectural culture”. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will be located in Saadiyat Island cultural district in Abu Dhabi and will be the largest of the Guggenheim museums. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is an art museum in Venice, Italy, and is one of the most visited attractions in Venice.
