Valerie Hillings Named Inaugural Director of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
She will return to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation after helming the North Carolina Museum of Art for nearly eight years.
Shortly after confirming its opening date for this coming December, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi announced that Valerie Hillings will serve as the museum's inaugural director. Hillings returns to the Guggenheim's United Arab Emirates outpost after having previously served as its associate director of curatorial affairs from 2009 to 2018.
Hillings has led the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) in Raleigh for the last eight years. Her tenure was marked by acquisitions for the "People's Collection" — a reinterpretation of the museum's holdings through the lens of public accessibility. Under her leadership, NCMA's collection strategy emphasized acquiring work by women, LGBTQIA+, minority, and local artists.
While strategic, Hillings's appointment at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi stokes the ongoing controversy surrounding the exploitation and dire forced labor conditions for the migrant construction workers who built out the museum, alongside the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the New York University campus, on Saadiyat Island.
The labor conditions have sparked multiple protest interventions and calls to boycott the Guggenheim Foundation over the last 15 years.
Before joining the NCMA, Hillings worked for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation from 2004 to 2018. She began on the curatorial team at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, co-organizing and curating topical and collections-based exhibitions onsite and internationally. In 2009, two years before site work for the Frank Gehry-designed building began, Hilling was tapped to develop the collection for the Abu Dhabi outpost in partnership with the city's Department of Culture and Tourism.
The growing collection and forthcoming exhibitions center output and art movements from 1960 onward that “reflect and advance Abu Dhabi’s role as a catalyst for creative production and innovation in the arts,” per a press release from the Guggenheim Foundation.
