As the December 11 opening date approaches for the long-anticipated Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the institution has solidified its leadership with a pivotal appointment: Dr. Valerie Hillings will serve as its inaugural director.

Her selection signals both continuity and ambitious transformation. Hillings arrives from the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA), where she has served as director since 2018, doubling annual attendance to 1.2 million while orchestrating a major diversification of its permanent collection to elevate women, minority, LGBTQIA+, and local artists.

Yet this appointment is also a homecoming. Between 2009 and 2018—two years before ground was broken on Frank Gehry’s monument of stacked, asymmetrical cones and titanium forms on Saadiyat Island—Hillings served as curator and associate director of curatorial affairs for the Abu Dhabi project, leading the team that laid the foundational strategy for the museum’s permanent collection.

Hillings brings a rare blend of institutional rigor and global curatorial vision. Holding a Ph.D. and MA from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts alongside an AB from Duke University, her fourteen-year initial tenure across the Solomon R. Guggenheim network produced exhibitions that redefined cross-cultural art historical narratives.

Her work on ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York critically reassessed post-WWII avant-garde networks across Europe and Asia. Later, with The Creative Act: Performance, Process, Presence in Abu Dhabi (2017), she offered audiences a glimpse into the transcultural, performance-driven thesis that will define the new museum’s identity.

Framing the Saadiyat Cultural Landscape

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is designed to challenge Western-centric art canons, positioning modern and contemporary art through a global, interconnected lens. Hillings’ dual expertise—having shaped the collection’s original acquisitions blueprint while gaining extensive executive experience driving institutional growth—makes her uniquely suited to activate Gehry’s structural marvel.

Under her stewardship, the institution aims to establish a living forum where non-Western art histories engage in direct dialogue with global movements. As the museum prepares to unseal its doors this December, Hillings steps into a role that bridges architectural ambition, curatorial scholarship, and a new era for Middle Eastern cultural infrastructure.