Museum's First Leader Steps Into Role After Years Behind Scenes

Dr. Valerie Hillings already knows the building. She knows the collection strategy, the acquisitions, the years of quiet groundwork. On August 4, 2026, the Department of Culture and Tourism made it official: Hillings will serve as the inaugural Director of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, leading the museum from its opening forward.

The appointment carries unusual weight because of how long she has been part of the story. Between 2009 and 2018, Hillings worked as Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, collaborating directly with Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism on collection strategy, acquisitions, pre-opening programming, and the Frank Gehry-designed building itself. Before that, she spent five years on the curatorial staff at the Guggenheim in New York.

That history shapes how she describes the role. In her statement, Hillings said she is “honoured to return to Abu Dhabi to complete the once-in-a-lifetime journey of founding and opening Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a museum developed in the United Arab Emirates by colleagues from both the region and around the world.” She intends to welcome local and global audiences to the Gehry-designed building and help them discover interconnections and distinctive narratives through modern and contemporary art spanning the 1960s to the present.

Meanwhile, her most recent post demonstrated what she can do at institutional scale. Since 2018, Hillings has served as Director of the North Carolina Museum of Art, where she led a complete reimagining of the permanent collection galleries, expanded the collection by approximately 400 works, and presided over a doubling of annual attendance to 1.2 million visitors. Her academic credentials include a PhD and MA in Art History and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and an AB in Art History from Duke University, with specialisation in modern and contemporary art.

The museum she returns to lead is substantial. Thirty galleries occupy 11,600 square metres of interior exhibition space, with an additional 23,000 square metres dedicated to outdoor exhibition areas. Upon opening, the institution will rank among the world’s most significant venues for modern and contemporary art.

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi sits within the Saadiyat Cultural District alongside Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum, Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, and teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi, one of the world’s densest concentrations of major cultural institutions in a single district. Through its collection, exhibitions, commissions, research, and public programmes, the museum aims to foster conversation across cultures and generations while positioning Abu Dhabi as a global centre for artistic innovation.

The museum’s social media presence is already active across Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn. What remains to be seen is how Hillings translates nearly two decades of institutional knowledge into the experience visitors will actually have when they walk through those galleries for the first time.