Melissa Chiu, whose experience at the head of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington seems tailored to the ambitions of the Guggenheim, will take over as director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York on September 1.
Founded in 1939 by Solomon R. Guggenheim, the New York museum houses a permanent collection of some 7,000 works centered on 20th-century abstraction, with major figures like Kandinsky, Picasso, Pollock and Rothko. Established since 1959 in Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral icon on Fifth Avenue, the foundation relies on patronage, which is the norm in the United States, and branches abroad, which is less so.
Aged 54, Melissa Chiu succeeds Mariët Westermann, who is refocusing on the strategic supervision of the international network (Bilbao, Venice, Abu Dhabi) after having combined the management of the museum and that of the foundation since 2024.
Since 2014, Melissa Chiu has directed the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, a museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art created in 1974 from the collection of Joseph Hirshhorn and integrated into the Smithsonian Institution. It indicates having raised nearly 250 million dollars (213 million euros) in twelve years. It also doubled attendance in three years and expanded the collections beyond the post-war Euro-American framework. She launched the redevelopment of the sculpture garden entrusted to Hiroshi Sugimoto, the reopening of which is announced in October.
Before Washington, she directed the collection at the University of Western Sydney from 1993 to 1996. The following year, she founded Gallery 4A in Sydney, which became 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art. From 2001 to 2004, she was the first curator of contemporary Asian and Asian-American art at the Asia Society of New York, a position created for her. Appointed director of the Asia Society Museum in 2004 and vice-president of Global Art Programs until 2014, she launched a contemporary collection complementary to the Rockefeller Collection.
His departure is part of a series of withdrawals at the head of the Smithsonian Institution museums. She becomes the fourth leader to leave office in less than two years, amid heightened tensions during Trump’s second term. Kim Sajet resigned from the National Portrait Gallery in June 2025, after public criticism of its diversity policies. Stephanie Stebich is removed from the Smithsonian American Art Museum at the end of 2025, following internal complaints, and then named special adviser. Kevin Young stepped aside in April 2025 before leaving the National Museum of African American History and Culture, targeted for its programs on systemic racism.
In an interview with Guardianshe assures that her departure is not linked to Donald Trump’s attempts to interfere in the affairs of the Smithsonian. “The Guggenheim is an extraordinary institution, one of the major museums in our field. This has never been a determining criterion for me”.
