[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1398396995.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tMelissa Chiu will depart her post as director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., to lead the Guggenheim Museum in New York, making her the latest person to depart a Smithsonian-run museum as the Trump administration continues its crackdown.<\/p>\n
\n\tShe will report to Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation director and CEO Mari\u00ebt Westermann, who facilitates all the museums worldwide in the Guggenheim network, among them a long-awaited Abu Dhabi institution that is reportedly nearing its inauguration. Chiu begins as director of Guggenheim Museum on September 1.<\/p>\n
\n\tAaron Seeto, the current Hirshhorn deputy director, will serve as an interim replacement for Chiu, who has led the museum since 2014, when she became the first person born outside the US ever to hold the post.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cMelissa has guided the Hirshhorn with thoughtfulness and purpose, strengthening its role as a national museum while supporting artists, scholars and the public,\u201d Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, said in a statement. \u201cWe are grateful for her leadership and wish her continued success in this next chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the 12 years since, Chiu has cultivated a reputation for staging blockbuster exhibitions for art stars, such as one for Yayoi Kusama, whose 2017 \u201cInfinity Mirror Rooms\u201d exhibition drew a whopping 160,000 visitors. In recent years, the museum has also held shows for Laurie Anderson, Osgemeos, Adam Pendleton, Georg Baselitz, Mark Bradford, and others who are already well-known, both within and beyond the art industry.<\/p>\n
\n\tPrior to joining the Hirshhorn, Chiu, who was born in Australia, had founded the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and served as a curator of contemporary Asian and Asian American art for the Asia Society in New York. <\/p>\n
\n\tSome have been critical of Chiu\u2019s crowd-pleasing tendencies. Her 2023 launch of The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist<\/em>, a Hirshhorn-facilitated reality show that saw artists jockey for an exhibition at the museum, was largely panned, with Anni Irish arguing in an ARTnews<\/em> op-ed that the series \u201cdoes little to decode the inner mechanisms of the art world for a general public.\u201d (It was noticeably not mentioned in the Guggenheim\u2019s press release about Chiu\u2019s appointment this morning.)<\/p>\n \n\tThe 2017 Kusama show was also ridiculed in some corners. In his Washington Post<\/em> review of the show, critic Philip Kennicott accused the show of \u201crather bloodless rhetoric,\u201d arguing that it prettified Kusama\u2019s struggles with mental illness and made them palatable to the public.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a statement, Westermann touted Chiu\u2019s abilities to lure in a wider audience. \u201cMelissa has an outstanding and inspiring track record of leadership in the arts, most recently as Director of the Smithsonian\u2019s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,\u201d she said. \u201cShe transformed the Hirshhorn with the international and local disposition that is so special to our institution, and I look forward to working in close partnership with her.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPrior to Westermann, Richard Armstrong led both the foundation and the New York museum, leaving in 2023 after 15 years of directing the Guggenheim. <\/p>\n \n\tChiu\u2019s appointment solidifies the splitting of Armstrong\u2019s role in two, though Westermann had temporarily led the New York museum in the period since her hiring. She told the New York Times<\/em> on Thursday that she would now focus more of her time on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, with Chiu spearheading operations in New York.<\/p>\n \n\tChiu is the latest person to exit the Smithsonian, a museum network that Trump alleged had \u201ccome under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology\u201d in an executive order issued last year. He proceeded to claim he fired National Portrait Gallery director Kim Sajet\u2014she resigned soon afterward, and now leads the Milwaukee Art Museum\u2014and issue a list of artworks and presentations at Smithsonian museums that he found objectionable. Many dealt with marginalized communities, emphasizing issues related to race, trans identity, queer rights, and immigration.<\/p>\n \n\tSpeaking to the New York Times<\/em>, Chiu did not directly address the Trump administration\u2019s attempts to censor the Smithsonian\u2019s displays, but she did say that she would\u2019ve accepted the Guggenheim\u2019s offer, regardless of when it arrived. She called the role her \u201cdream job.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cUnder any circumstances I would have taken this job, and I feel confident in the legacy that I\u2019m leaving behind at the Hirshhorn,\u201d she told the Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Times<\/em> also noted that Daniel Sallick, the longtime Hirshhorn board chair and a contributor to ARTnews<\/em>, had departed his role at the end of his term in 2024. He is now on the Guggenheim\u2019s board.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/melissa-chiu-leaves-hirshhorn-guggenheim-museum-smithsonian-1234780706\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1398396995.jpg?w=1024″] Melissa Chiu will depart her post as director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., to lead the Guggenheim Museum in New York, making her the latest person to depart a Smithsonian-run museum as the Trump administration continues its crackdown. She will report to Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1874700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1874700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1874700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1874700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1874700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}