Thank you, Kaywin Feldman

Kaywin Feldman, who has led the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) since 2008 as its Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President, has resigned her position. Her last day will be March 1, 2019. Feldman will become the fifth Director of the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C.

During Feldman’s 11-year tenure, she transformed the museum’s relationship to its city, opening its doors to community dialogue, providing free membership, and engaging with the defining social issues of our era, like equity and empathy—including the creation of a Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts at the museum.

She is a past president of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and past chair of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), and is a frequent speaker on reinventing the museum for the 21st century. She is a champion of digital technology for expanding access to art. Feldman established a contemporary art department at Mia and new galleries for showcasing the art of Africa. And she has overseen a series of experimental installations in the museum’s venerable period rooms, exploring new ways of engaging with history.

Feldman has galvanized the galleries, and her field, with groundbreaking exhibitions such as “At Home with Monsters”—featuring the art of filmmaker Guillermo del Toro— and “Power and Beauty in China’s Last Dynasty,” a dramatic display of Chinese art designed by avant-garde theater artist Robert Wilson. As a curator, she has helped organize popular traveling exhibitions like “The Habsburgs: Rarely Seen Masterpieces from Europe’s Greatest Dynasty,” which brought dozens of masterpieces to Minneapolis for the museum’s 100th birthday year, in 2015.

Her efforts have helped double attendance while bringing international renown to the museum’s art, particularly its Japanese collection, which has more than doubled during her tenure. Other acquisitions include works by Kehinde Wiley, Ai Wei Wei, James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

“The Minneapolis Institute of Art has been so fortunate to have the leadership of Kaywin Feldman over the last 11 years,” said Nivin MacMillan, who established the endowment for Feldman’s position and serves as chair of the Board of Trustees. “Under her tenure, the museum has become a vital, thriving organization with programs which matter for all kinds of audiences. Mia has enjoyed record attendance, a Contemporary Art department has been added, and our renowned Japanese collection has doubled in size. We have also acquired many masterpieces in all areas of the collections. Kaywin is a person of enormous talent who has a devoted following in our community. We wish her every good thing in her new opportunity, but she will be sorely missed in Minnesota.”