Director and C.E.O., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation
Dr. Mariët Westermann is the director and C.E.O. of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, directing its flagship institution in New York, overseeing the Foundation and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and providing collaborative leadership working with the director of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the project director for the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
She has led NYU Abu Dhabi, a degree-granting liberal arts and research campus of NYU, as its vice chancellor and chief executive and as professor of arts and humanities since 2019. She was the institution’s provost at its founding, from 2007 to 2010. At NYU Abu Dhabi, she oversaw all academic, administrative, financial and operational affairs. An art historian by training, she is widely regarded as an innovative and empathetic leader who inspires excellence, manages complexity and brings a profound understanding of how art, culture and the humanities play a critical role in our globally interconnected world.
As C.E.O., Dr. Westermann sets the strategic direction at the Guggenheim constellation of museums and guides them toward realizing its vision and purpose of collecting, preserving, and interpreting modern and contemporary art, and connecting people to the extraordinary works of art in the Guggenheim collections. She oversees and directs the Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum in New York and serves as the Foundation’s head steward of its seminal collections and learning programs and its sites in Europe and Abu Dhabi.
Previously, she served as executive vice president at the Mellon Foundation, as a faculty member and director at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, as associate director of research and academic programs at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts, and as a faculty member at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is a graduate of Williams College and holds a master's degree and Ph.D. degrees in the history of art from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts.
