JULIáN ZUGAZAGOITIA APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF THE NELSON-ATKINS MUSEUM OF ART

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City has selected Julián Zugazagoitia, the director of El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, as its new director, reports Randy Kennedy for the New York Times. Zugazagoitia will replace Marc F. Wilson, one of the nation’s longest-serving museum directors, who last year announced his decision to retire after twenty-eight years and after shepherding a $385 million capital campaign to strengthen the museum’s endowment and transform its Beaux-Arts complex with a glass-block addition by the architect Steven Holl.

Zugazagoitia, 46, has run El Museo for almost eight years, a period of sweeping change for a small institution founded in 1969 as a haven for Puerto Rican culture. It has expanded its mission to focus more generally on Latino and Latin American art, and under Zugazagoitia’s leadership it has substantially increased its budget, endowment, donations, and audience. The museum reopened last fall after its own makeover, a $35 million renovation that added a new facade and courtyard and modernized its galleries.

Sarah F. Rowland, the chairwoman of the Nelson-Atkins board, said that the museum’s search committee chose Zugazagoitia from a field of about a dozen finalists because “his training and temperament are exactly what we had been looking for––his commitment to the arts is so broad.”

Raised in Mexico and educated in Paris, Zugazagoitia served as executive assistant to the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum before taking over El Museo. He said that though he had not visited the Nelson-Atkins before becoming involved in its search for a director, he was excited about the chance to take over “an encyclopedic museum, the breadth and depth of whose collection is astounding.”