Cooper Hewitt Names Maria Nicanor Director

Nicanor's appointment comes two years after the departure of Caroline Baumann, who had been with the Cooper Hewitt for nearly two full decades, seven of those years as director. Baumann had overseen the three-year renovation of the museum's Upper East Side home, which opened in 2014, but was controversially forced to resign two years shy of the Cooper Hewitt's 125th anniversary. Nicanor is stepping in as director when the Cooper Hewitt "celebrates its 125th anniversary," according to an announcement on the appointment, "and shares content throughout the year that highlights the importance of design in the past, present and future."

Born in Barcelona and raised in Madrid, Nicanor holds a bachelor’s degree in art and architectural history and theory from the Autónoma University of Madrid and a master’s degree in museum and curatorial studies from New York University. Following graduation with the latter in 2005, Nicanor starting working at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, eventually spending eight years there in a variety of roles, including associate curator on such exhibition as Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward and as curator of the traveling BMW Guggenheim Lab. She was also on the team leading the international architecture competition for the unsuccessful attempt to build a Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki.

From the Guggenheim, Nicanor went to London for three years as curator of the design, architecture and digital department at the V&A, then in 2016 she became the founding director of the Norman Foster Foundation, which opened in Madrid in June 2017. That year she was named executive director of the Rice Design Alliance, the public programs and outreach arm of the Rice School of Architecture. Her role at Rice involved, among other things, overseeing the development of content and programming, including lectures, the Houston Design Research Grant program, the annual Spotlight Award for emerging architects, design competitions, an international travel program and the annual print publication Cite: The Architecture and Design Review of Houston. 

On being named director of the Cooper Hewitt, where she will be responsible for 86 employees, an annual budget of over $15 million, and a collection of about 215,000 objects, Nicanor said in a statement: "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."