Change has come to the top of America’s oldest and best-funded arts organizations as Rice University’s Maria Nicanor has been named director of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, in New York. Nicanor will step into a position previously occupied by interim directors John Davis and Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar on March 21st.

As director, she will oversee 86 employees and an annual operating budget of $15 million. Nicanor will also be in charge of overseeing the museum's slate of programming, which includes a  newly-launched digital platform, in addition to maintaining its 215,000 object collection, educational initiatives, and annual National Design Awards. 

“Maria has an impressive passion for design and a thorough understanding of the impact it has on our shared future,” Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch said in a statement. “Her vision and leadership will help Cooper Hewitt reach even more audiences across the nation and around the world.”

Born in Barcelona and raised in Madrid, Nicanor has degrees in art and architectural history and curation studies from the Autónoma University of Madrid and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, respectively. Nicanor was instrumental in leading the development of the Norman Foster Foundation in Madrid, which she served as the first director of after a three-year stint as a curator in the design, architecture, and digital department at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. 

Nicanor was also a longtime staffer at the Guggenheim Museum, where she curated several noteworthy exhibitions in addition to spearheading a multitude of satellite initiatives at the foundation’s Berlin and Bilbao locations. Her work as the executive director of the Rice Design Alliance has led to the development of the innovative Houston Design Research Grant Program, an annual print publication, and the reshaping of its content and exhibitions to meet the new digital mandate placed on similar art and design organizations by COVID-19.

“I’m grateful and deeply honored to join the exceptional team at Cooper Hewitt,” Nicanor said. “Joining the Smithsonian family and building upon Cooper Hewitt’s past successes provides the opportunity to bring together the three most important pillars of my career: design and architecture, public service and museum work. We can’t ignore that it’s a particularly complicated time for museums in general right now. Not just what we do, but how we do it, for whom and with whom, are essential questions for design museums to consider.”