Board of Trustees

Agnes Gund

Agnes Gund

Co-Founder and Chair Emerita

President Emerita, Museum of Modern Art; Founder and Chair Emerita, Studio in a School

Agnes Gund is president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art and chair of its International Council. Ms. Gund joined the MoMA Board in 1976 and served as president from 1991 until 2002.

Ms. Gund is founder and chair emerita of Studio in a School, a non-profit organization she established in 1977 in response to budget cuts that virtually eliminated arts classes from New York City public schools.

A philanthropist and collector of modern and contemporary art, Ms. Gund serves on the boards of MoMA PS1, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, the Morgan Library and Museum, and the Center for Curatorial Leadership, of which she is co-founder and chair emerita. She is trustee emerita of the Barnes Foundation and YoungArts, as well as honorary trustee of Independent Curators International and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland.

A civic leader and staunch supporter of education, environmental concerns and social justice, Ms. Gund has served on the boards of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, the Andy Warhol Foundation, Chess in the Schools, the Frick Collection, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the New York City Mayor’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, among others. In June 2017, she launched the Art for Justice Fund in partnership with the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors to support criminal justice reform in the U.S.

Ms. Gund earned a B.A. in History from Connecticut College and an M.A. in Art History from Harvard University. She holds honorary doctorates from University of the Arts (2021), Bowdoin College (2012), the CUNY Graduate Center (2007), and Brown University (1996), among others, and was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts (2016). Ms. Gund received the National Medal of the Arts from President Clinton (1997), the J. Paul Getty Medal (2018), the inaugural Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award (2020), the French Legion of Honour (2021) and the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University (2022).

Ed Henry

Ed Henry

Chair

Former President and CEO, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation 

Ed Henry served as President and CEO of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation from 2009 until his retirement in 2020. The foundation supports grants programs in the performing arts, the environment, medical research and child well-being. The work of the foundation is supported by an endowment of approximately $1.8 billion. He also served as president of several operating foundations, including the Duke Farms Foundation, which is focused on environmental stewardship, and the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, which operates a center for the study of Islamic arts and cultures and "Building Bridges," a related grants program.

Previously he was an associate dean at Columbia Business School and continues as an adjunct faculty member. He has held senior administrative positions with a number of nonprofit institutions and was a David Rockefeller fellow with the Partnership for New York City.

Henry earned a degree in economics from the University of Michigan and business from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Much earlier in life he was a dancer with the New York City-based companies of Dan Wagoner and Viola Farber, had the opportunity to perform throughout the United States and abroad, served in the Artists-in-Schools program, created work for a number of venues and participated as a peer reviewer for federal, state and local funding organizations.

Kimerly Rorschach

Kimerly Rorschach

Secretary

Former Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO, Seattle Art Museum

Kimerly Rorschach served as the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO of the Seattle Art Museum from 2012 until her retirement in 2019. Previously, she was director of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (2004-2012) and the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago (1994-2004).

At the Seattle Art Museum, Rorschach built and diversified the collection and exhibition program, presenting groundbreaking exhibitions including Disguise: Masks and Global African Art (2015), Chiho Aoshima: Rebirth of the World (2015), and Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, and Mickalene Thomas (2018), among many others. She also established an increased focus on local and regional artists within the context of global collections and programs, and built wide-ranging partnerships in Seattle’s fast-growing and increasingly diverse communities. Under her leadership, the museum also centered and elevated its work around equity and inclusion, a top priority in the museum’s strategic planning and board and staff recruitment. She led a $150M campaign to strengthen the museum’s endowment, and to fund a major renovation and expansion of the historic Seattle Asian Art Museum, one of SAM’s three sites.

At Duke and the University of Chicago, Rorschach provided transformational leadership, raising the profile of these university museums and advocating for the unique value of the arts in higher education. She was the founding director of the Nasher Museum at Duke, quickly establishing it as a top university art museum with a distinctive program and supporting the creation of a groundbreaking contemporary collection focusing on artists of color. Throughout her career, she has made it a priority to mentor students and first-time museum directors.

Rorschach holds a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and a PhD in art history from Yale. She is a past president of the Association of Art Museum Directors. Rorschach also serves on the advisory board of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, and she is the current Board President of the American Federation of Arts in New York.

Anita Contini

Anita Contini

Trustee At-Large

Arts Program Lead, Bloomberg Philanthropies

Anita Contini joined Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2010 as the Arts Program Lead.  Through the Arts Program, Bloomberg Philanthropies helps small and mid-size cultural organizations strengthen long-term organizational capacity, supports temporary public art projects that enrich the vibrancy of cities, and helps leading cultural institutions globally implement cutting-edge technology projects that transform visitor experience. Bloomberg Philanthropies also collaborates with some of the nation’s top foundations, federal agencies, and banks to invest in projects where artists and arts organizations play a central role in shaping their communities’ social, physical, and economic future.

Prior to joining Bloomberg Philanthropies, Anita was Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Public Affairs and Philanthropy at CIT Group.  From 2002 to 2005, she served as Vice President and Director of the WTC Memorial, Cultural, and Civic Programs at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.  She developed a process and implementation plan for the 9/11 World Trade Center memorial, including the jury process for selecting its designer.

Previously, Anita served as First Vice President of Global Sponsorships and Client Events Marketing at Merrill Lynch, where she managed the firm’s giving and client program and as Vice President and Artistic Director of World Financial Center Arts and Events/Marketing for Brookfield Properties.

In 1974, Anita founded Creative Time, an award-winning nonprofit arts organization, and was its Director and President until 1987. 

She has received a number of awards for distinguished public service, including from the Municipal Arts Society, Hofstra University, AIA New York Chapter, ArtTable, and the Downtown Lower Manhattan Business Association.

Anita currently serves on the boards of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, The Drawing Center, DataArts, Grantmakers in the Arts, and Publicolor.  She is on the Operating Committee for ArtPlace America and a member of ArtTable.

Courtney J Martin

Courtney J Martin

Trustee At-Large

Director, Yale Center for British Art

In 2019, Courtney J. Martin became the sixth director of the Yale Center for British Art. Previously, she was the deputy director and chief curator at the Dia Art Foundation; an assistant professor in the History of Art and Architecture department at Brown University; an assistant professor in the History of Art department at Vander­bilt University; a chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow in the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley; a fellow at the Getty Research Institute; and a Henry Moore Institute research fellow. She also worked in the media, arts, and culture unit of the Ford Foundation in New York. In 2015, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

In 2012, Martin curated the exhibition Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip . . . Frank Bowling’s Poured Paintings 1973–1978 at Tate Britain. In 2014, she co-curated the group show Minimal Baroque: Post-Minimalism and Contemporary Art at Rønnebæksholm in Denmark. From 2008 to 2015, she co-led a research project on the Anglo-American art critic Lawrence Alloway at the Getty Research Institute and was co-editor of Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator (Getty Publications, 2015, winner of the 2016 Historians of British Art Book Award). In 2015, she curated an exhibition at the Dia Art Foundation focused on the American painter Robert Ryman. At Dia, she also oversaw exhibitions of works by Dan Flavin, Sam Gilliam, Blinky Palermo, Dorothea Rockburne, Keith Sonnier, and Andy Warhol. She was editor of the book Four Generations: The Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art (Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2016), surveying an important collection of modern and contemporary work by artists of African descent.

She received a bachelor of arts from Oberlin College and a doctorate from Yale University for her research on twentieth-century British art and is the author of essays on Rasheed Araeen, Kader Attia, Rina Banerjee, Frank Bowling, Lara Favaretto, Sam Gilliam, Leslie Hewitt, Asger Jorn, Wangechi Mutu, Ed Ruscha, and Yinka Shonibare CBE (RA).

She was a participant in the Center for Curatorial Leadership’s fellowship in 2019.

Theo Melas-Kyriazi

Theo Melas-Kyriazi

Trustee-At-Large

CFO, Levitronix Technologies Inc.

Theodose (Theo) Melas-Kyriazi is the Chief Financial Officer of Levitronix Technologies Inc, the world leader in magnetically levitated pumps used to manufacture semiconductor chips and pharmaceuticals.  He is also an Advisory Partner at Flagship Pioneering, a life science innovation firm that has created more than 100 companies in the biotechnology and sustainability fields.  He spent two decades at Thermo Fisher Scientific in a variety of management roles.

Over the last twenty years, Melas-Kyriazi has served on the board of directors of numerous companies in the health care field. In addition, he has devoted significant time and energy to philanthropic organizations.  For 25 years, he has served on the board of directors of the International Institute of New England, an organization that serves thousands of refugees and immigrants every year and helps them succeed through resettlement, education, career advancement and pathways to citizenship. For a decade Melas-Kyriazi has served as a Trustee of the American School for Classical Studies at Athens, the preeminent center for the study of the Greek world from antiquity to the present day, where he also chairs the audit committee. He is also a Trustee of College Year in Athens, a study abroad program that focuses upon the history and civilization of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, and a Trustee of the Colebrook Land Conservancy, whose mission is to conserve and preserve land in Colebrook in Northwestern Connecticut.

The son of esteemed collectors of nineteenth-century Impressionist and Post-Impressionist French art, Melas-Kyriazi has had strong connections to the art world throughout his life. He holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.B.A. from Harvard University, and lives with his wife Lisa, a painter, between their homes in Brookline, Massachusetts, and New York City.

Humberto Moro

Humberto Moro

TRUSTEE AT-LARGE

Deputy Director of Program, Dia Art Foundation

Humberto Moro is Deputy Director of Program at Dia Art Foundation where he oversees the exhibitions, publications and learning and engagement departments. He was previously Deputy Director and Senior Curator at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, where he curated OTRXS MUNDXS, a large-scale survey of artists working in the city, and solo shows by Erick Meyenberg, Tania Pérez Córdova and Ugo Rondinone. He was Curator of the 2021 Exposure section at EXPO Chicago; and from 2016-22, Adjunct Curator at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, where he co-organized Frederick Douglass: Embers of Freedom and Points of Contact by Elizabeth Catlett, and solo exhibitions by Kenturah Davis, Glen Fogel, Alex Gardner, Oliver Laric, Cynthia Gutiérrez, Pia Camil, Mariana Castillo Deball, Tom Burr, Yang Fudong, FOS, AES+F, Mark Wallinger, Isaac Julien, and Anna Maria Maiolino, among others. Moro has previously held curatorial positions at the Park Avenue Armory in New York and Museo Jumex in Mexico City. Moro curated Other Situations, a project by Liliana Porter which included THEM, a theater play at The Kitchen, the reopening exhibition at El Museo del Barrio, and a publication. He was the recipient of the 2016 Estancias Tabacalera Research Award for Latin-American curators, Madrid, Spain, and was part of the 7th Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course, in Gwangju, South Korea. Moro holds a BFA in painting from the Universidad de Guanajuato, Guanajuato; and a MA in curatorial studies by the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York; and is part of the 2021 cohort of the Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL).

Marnie Pillsbury

Marnie Pillsbury

Trustee at-Large

Former Philanthropic Advisor and Executive Director, David Rockefeller Fund

Marnie S. Pillsbury was the Executive Director of The David Rockefeller Fund from 1990 until 2014,  and served as David Rockefeller’s Philanthropic Advisor from 1990 until March of 2017.   She is an Emerita Trustee and former Vice Chair of The Rockefeller University and the International Women’s Health Coalition and serves on the boards of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Pinkerton Foundation, and the Center for Curatorial Leadership. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Council at The Museum of Modern Art. A graduate of Wellesley College, Mrs. Pillsbury received an M.B.A. from the New York University Stern School of Business in 1987.

Susan S. Sawyers

Susan S. Sawyers

Trustee At-Large

Susan S. Sawyers is an early-stage investor in women-led technology companies, a working photographer and strategist with experience in the arts, education and journalism. She advocates for moral leadership and creativity in business, and everyday life.

Sawyers earned a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and she is also a graduate of the International Center of Photography and Grinnell College. She began her career as a legislative aide and French teacher in Washington, D.C. and taught English and wrote for a local newspaper as a Fulbright-Hayes Teaching Assistant in Paimpol, France. After graduate school, Sawyers produced Bloomberg Radio’s Bloomberg EDU, Bloomberg Radio’s award-winning weekly look at education. Her writing and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The Huffington Post, The Hechinger Report and New York Social Diary. She has written about education, philanthropy and women in society.

Sawyers was assistant vice president at Christie’s and then served as director and curator of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. These experiences sparked her interest in fostering the work of living artists.

Sawyers is a founding donor of The 19th News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. She is also a supporter of The New York Women’s Foundation, Determined to Succeed, For Freedoms, a member of Solidaire, and an advisor to The Hechinger Report. She has supported young people as a coach for Do Something and The Future Project and was a teaching assistant at the International Center of Photography. She coaches first generation college and graduate students in New York City.

Susan lives in New York City with her husband, Charles Sawyers, M.D. Dr. Sawyers is the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chair in Human Oncology and Pathogenesis and the Chair, Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Alice Tisch

Alice Tisch

Trustee At-Large

Trustee, MoMA

Alice Tisch engages in a variety of volunteer activities, with a special focus on arts, health and social services, and education. She serves on the Board and Executive Committee of the Museum of Modern Art where she also chairs the museum's Acquisitions Department of Architecture & Design. She serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, NY State's largest social service agency. She serves as trustee of the NYU Langone Medical Center, having headed their pediatrics initiative, KiDS of NYU, for over twenty years. An alumna of Wellesley College and Columbia University Business School, Alice and her husband, Thomas, have four children. They live in NYC.

Michelle Joan Wilkinson

Michelle Joan Wilkinson

Trustee At-Large

Curator, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Ph.D. is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), where she works on projects related to contemporary black life. She is the co-curator of two inaugural exhibitions at the NMAAHC: A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond and A Century in the Making: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Wilkinson is also developing the museum’s collections in architecture and design.

Prior to NMAAHC, spent six years as Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture. In that capacity, she curated over twenty exhibitions, including the critically-acclaimed A People’s Geography: The Spaces of African American Life, and two award-winning shows: For Whom It Stands: The Flag and the American People and Material Girls: Contemporary Black Women Artists.

Wilkinson holds a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. from Emory University. From 1999-2002, she was an assistant professor of African American, Puerto Rican, and Caribbean literature at Bard College in New York. In 2002, Wilkinson entered the museum field seeking to fulfill her passion for the arts, writing, scholarly research, and public engagement. Since then, she has worked on exhibitions, publications, and public programs for the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she held the position of Editor and Library Coordinator.

Wilkinson’s research interests range from African American and African Diaspora cultural studies to global architecture and design. Wilkinson was a 2012 fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York City, and completed a short-term residency at the Design Museum in London as part of her fellowship. Her honors and awards include fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. Her interdisciplinary research project, “V is for Veranda,” about architectural heritage in the Anglophone Caribbean, has been presented to international audiences in Suriname, England, India, and the United States.

Wilkinson is active on several boards and committees in the museum field. She is the editor of For Whom It Stands: The Flag and the American People and she has published critical essays in New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement and Potentially Harmful: The Art of American Censorship. Her writing also has appeared in the International Review of African American Art, ARC Magazine: Contemporary Caribbean Visual Art and Culture, Studio: The Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Black Issues Book Review, and Revue Noire: Art Contemporain Africain, among others.