Museum Series No. 4 National Museum of Asian Arts – Musée Guimet x Seattle Art Museum

Villa Albertine and the Center for Curatorial Leadership are thrilled to host an exceptional transatlantic conversation on the future of museums between Yannick Lintz, President of the National Museum of Asian Arts – Musée Guimet and Amada Cruz, Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO of the Seattle Art Museum.

This discussion will be moderated by Elizabeth Smith, Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

The event will be streamed live on Villa Albertine’s YouTube Channel, starting at 6 pm EST.

The Speakers

Yannick Lintz, President of the National Museum of Asian Arts – Musée Guimet

Ph.D. in Achaemenid History (Sorbonne University), Yannick Lintz was appointed President of the National Museum of Asian Arts – Musée Guimet by the President of the Republic on November 1, 22. She was previously director of the Department of Islamic Art at the Louvre Museum from November 2013 to October 2022.

As curator, she curated many international exhibitions like Medieval Morocco, or Splendors of the Uzbek oases at the Louvre and abroad. Her different positions have set her on the road of international diplomatic and cultural projects with the Arab world, Iran, and Central Asia. In 2020, in a context of Islamism and Islamophobia, at the request of the French Prime Minister, she has organized a national event in 18 French cities called Islamic Art: A Past for a Present. She has also formed an international group of Directors of the main Museums in the world concerned by this question. As Invited professor in the Sorbonne University (Paris, France) and in Senghor University (Alexandria, Egypt), she has taught classes on Museum Management and Heritage Education.

She has a large experience on Heritage in Danger through her previous position as Vice-Chairman of ICOM France during 2000 and 2009. She has also developed an international expertise on Islamic Art Museums, their policies, their narratives, and their educative challenges. She is a Chevalier de l’Ordre du mérite et de la Légion d’honneur.

Amada Cruz, Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO of the Seattle Art Museum

Amada Cruz was named the Illsey Ball Nordstrom Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Seattle Art Museum in September 2019. 

Born in Havana, Cuba, Cruz studied Art History and Political Science at New York University. Her first museum position was as a curatorial intern at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where she subsequently worked as a Curatorial Assistant.

Amada Cruz served as The Sybil Harrington Director and Chief Executive Officer of Phoenix Art Museum from February 2015 to July 2019. Her other museum positions have included posts as Assistant Director and Acting Director at the Lannan Museum in Lake Worth Florida; Associate Curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution; Acting Chief Curator and Manilow Curator of Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies Museum at Bard College; and as the former Executive Director at San Antonio-based Artpace, an artist residency program. 

Cruz has also worked as a grantmaker and was the founding Program Director for United States Artists in Los Angeles, where she was responsible for all programming activities of a Ford and Rockefeller Foundations initiative. She also has been Executive Director of Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue in New York City, which awarded grants to visual artists in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago.  

Elizabeth Smith, Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation

Elizabeth Smith joined the New York-based Helen Frankenthaler Foundation as its first Executive Director in 2013.  Previously she was Executive Director, Curatorial Affairs, at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art; and Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Smith has curated, published, and lectured widely on topics in contemporary art and architecture.  Besides her current work on Helen Frankenthaler, she has organized and co-curated exhibitions and authored texts on artists including Uta Barth, Lee Bontecou, Jenny Holzer, Toba Khedoori, Kerry James Marshall, Donald Moffett, Catherine Opie, and Cindy Sherman, and on the architecture of the Los Angeles Case Study House program and the work of R.M Schindler.

Born in Boston, Smith was educated at Barnard College and Columbia University.  She has taught at University of Southern California’s School of Fine Arts and Bennington College’s Museum Fellows Term program. In 2021 the government of France awarded Smith the insignia of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

About the Villa Albertine Museum Series

The Villa Albertine Museum Series, launched by Villa Albertine and the Center for Curatorial Leadership, is a new platform to explore the future of museums on both sides of the Atlantic. It will bring together 24 women leaders from premier cultural institutions in France and the US for monthly conversations in 2023 on how museums must reinvent themselves to meet the challenges of the present.

The Villa Albertine Museum Series Spring Dialogues are made possible thanks to the generous support of Cartier and the Friends of Villa Albertine, notably Béatrice Stern, Sana Sabbagh and Denise Littlefield Sobel.