Julián A. Zugazagoitia
Julián A. Zugazagoitia is the Director & CEO of the Nelson-Atkins. Since taking this leadership role in 2010, Zugazagoitia has opened the museum to a much larger audience, increased attendance to more than half a million annually, and promoted a high level of scholarship with unique exhibitions and programs that highlight both the collection and the strengths of the curatorial and education teams. His international perspective resulted in exhibitions as diverse as Through the Eyes of Picasso, named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the country’s best exhibitions of 2017, Niki de Saint Phalle: Rebellion and Joy, the first full career U.S. retrospective of the French American avant-garde artist, and the enormously popular Hokusai: Waves of Inspiration from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He champions community involvement as well as artist commissions, such as Elias Crespin’s Grand Hexanet. Under Zugazagoitia’s leadership, an expansion plan has been embarked upon that will better serve the community and position the Nelson-Atkins to meet the future needs of artists and audiences.
Zugazagoitia holds an Art History degree from the École du Louvre and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Sorbonne Paris IV, with a focus on Aesthetics and Modernism in the arts. His work as a consultant, lecturer and curator has involved projects around the globe with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles. From 1999 to 2002, he served as Executive Assistant to the Director for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. During his tenure at El Museo del Barrio, a leading museum of Latino and Latin American art, Zugazagoitia led the institution through a $44 million capital campaign and a full renovation, which opened in 2009 to critical acclaim.