President Linda Mills and Provost Georgina Dopico announced on Tuesday that Alison Weaver, who founded the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, will take over as director of the Grey Art Museum at the end of May. Weaver succeeds former director Lynn Gumpert, who held the role from 1997 until her retirement in April 2025.
“Having had the privilege of working at the Grey for over four decades, I have seen firsthand the profound impact this institution has on the NYU community and the broader New York art world,” interim director Michèle Wong wrote in a statement to WSN. “I look forward to working alongside Alison, and I am confident that her extraordinary track record and visionary leadership make her the ideal person to guide the Grey into its next chapter.”
Throughout her tenure as executive founding director for the Moody Center, Weaver oversaw the construction of the Moody Center building — a 50,000 square-foot facility featuring a multimedia gallery and studio classrooms — implemented an artists-in-residence program and updated the gallery’s permanent collection to include more works from women and artists of color. Weaver also curated over 25 exhibitions and directed Rice’s public art program, which facilitates free public access to the Moody.
As director of the Grey, Weaver will be tasked with creating “a vision for the future of the museum” through curated exhibitions, programs and interdisciplinary scholarship with the university, raising awareness and funds for the museum, and being a “visible leader” on campus. The director works under the provost’s leadership with a roughly $2 million operating budget for its initiatives, collaborating with departments university-wide such as the NYU Institute of Fine Arts.
“Weaver clearly understands the important role that the Grey plays both within the NYU community and more broadly in the city’s arts community,” Mills wrote in an administration-wide email about Weaver’s appointment. “She’s keenly sensitive to the variety of constituencies that a university-based art institution such as the Grey Museum needs to serve.”
Before working at Rice in Houston, Texas, Weaver worked and studied in New York City’s arts scene, notably serving as the director of affiliate museums for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. There, she led the museum’s exhibition management, registration, art services, and library and archives departments while overseeing programs in Germany, Spain and Italy. Weaver earned her Master of Philosophy from the City University of New York in 2014, where she also taught art history.
“Since its founding, the Grey has been not only a world-class university art venue, but also a cultural hub, a home of interdisciplinary scholarship, and a nexus of learning and discovery,” Dopico said in a press release. “A former New Yorker, Alison Weaver values the Grey’s history and grasps its potential for ongoing impact.”
The Grey was founded as a gallery in 1975 and reopened as a fine arts museum in March 2024 at 18 Cooper Square, moving from its original site next to Washington Square Park. Housing over 6,000 of NYU’s pieces, the museum features a range of visual arts including painting, sculpture, drawing, film, photography and performance, also hosting a laboratory, distributing scholarly publications and sponsoring public arts programs year-round. Current exhibitions include “Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu: Contemporary Aboriginal Painting from the Australian Desert,” which features nearly 120 Indigenous Australian works, and “Handle with Care: Robert Rauschenberg’s Ecological Conscience,” a collection of prints by the American environmental artist.
The 14-month search for the new director was led by Clay Shirky, vice provost for AI and technology in education, and Steinhardt adjunct Karen Nercessian. Wong, former associate director and head of exhibitions and collections at the gallery, has been serving as its interim director since the end of last academic year.
“The Grey Art Museum occupies a unique position at the intersection of rigorous scholarship, contemporary artistic practice, and public engagement,” Weaver said in the press release. “As the museum enters this important next chapter in its new home, I’m excited to work with NYU’s extraordinary faculty, students, and staff to expand The Grey’s role as a laboratory for ideas and a vital cultural resource for the city.”
The Grey Art Museum is free to all NYU students, faculty and staff.
Contact Dani Biondi at [email protected].