Nancy Spector, the long-time chief curator and deputy director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, has been appointed to the same roles at the Brooklyn Museum, it was announced this morning. It is the first senior staff appointment Anne Pasternak has made since becoming director in September.
“I didn’t think I would ever leave the Guggenheim,” Spector says. “[But] I started thinking about being in one place for my entire career. It also came out of conversations with Anne Pasternak and the possibility of being at the beginning of something in terms of her leadership. She is a wonderful visionary.”
Spector joins an all-female cast at the top of the Brooklyn Museum: the chair (Elizabeth Sackler), the president (Stephanie Ingrassia) and the vice chair (Barbara Knowles Debs) of the museum’s board of trustees are all women. “The Sackler Center [for Feminist Art] was also a real lure,” Spector says.
During her 30-year stint at the Guggenheim, Spector organised key exhibitions by artists including Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Maurizio Cattelan and Marina Abramovic. She was also adjunct curator of the 1997 Venice Biennale and co-organised the first Berlin Biennial in 1998.
Spector, who starts her new job in April, will succeed Kevin Stayton, who has been chief curator of the Brooklyn Museum since 2001 and who will take on a newly created role as deputy director and director of collections and history.