Alison Weaver Named Next Director of NYU’s Grey Art Museum

New York University announced Tuesday that Alison Weaver will serve as the next director of the Gray Museum of Art. She will begin her duties on May 26, following the end of the current school year. Weaver succeeds Lynn Gumpert, who retired last year and had held the position since 1997.

Weaver comes to NYU from another university museum, the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University in Houston, where she served as founding executive director since 2015. Her last day at Rice will be May 1.

As founding director, Weaver oversaw the completion of the Moody Center’s new 50,000-square-foot building, which opened in 2017, and developed the plan and vision for the new institution. She also launched an artist-in-residence program at the museum, bringing artists such as Mona Hatoum, Coco Fusco, Brian King, Leslie Hewitt and Trevor Paglen to Houston. During her tenure, she also curated more than 25 exhibitions at the Moody Center and grew Rice’s art collection, adding works by artists such as Charles Gaines, Carmen Herrera and Eva LeWitt to the campus.

“Allison has profoundly and visibly shaped the arts at Rice since taking the helm at Moody in July 2015,” Rice President Reginald DesRoches said in a statement. “Her extraordinary leadership, innovation and dedication to Moody over the past decade have elevated the arts on campus and throughout Houston and earned the university national and international acclaim.”

In Texas, she also serves as co-chair of the Houston Museum District and a trustee of the Texas Foundation for the Arts. Before joining the Moody Center, Weaver taught art history at the City University of New York and served as director of the Guggenheim Museum, overseeing its outposts in Bilbao and Venice, as well as the now-shuttered outposts in Berlin and Las Vegas.

Founded in 1975 as the Gray Art Gallery, the Gray Art Gallery is one of the top university museums in the United States and has hosted major scholarly exhibitions of artists such as Frank Moore and Jesús Rafael Soto, as well as group exhibitions such as “Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952-1965” (2017) and “Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World.” 1950s-1980s” (2020). It also maintains a collection of over 6,000 objects.

“Few research universities have deeper and broader ties to the arts than New York University…and The Gray has been a central part of it for 50 years—curating important exhibitions and making significant contributions to New York’s downtown arts scene,” NYU President Linda G. Mills said in a statement. “Alison Weaver clearly understands the important role the Gray Museum plays in the NYU community, as well as the broader urban arts community. She is deeply sensitive to the diverse groups that a university arts institution like the Gray Museum needs to serve.”

In 2024, the Gray Museum moved from the ground floor and basement of NYU’s Main Silver Building to a custom-designed space at 18 Cooper Square and changed its name from “gallery” to “museum.” Its new location covers 14,000 square feet, increasing exhibition space by more than 40%.

“The Gray Museum of Art occupies a unique position at the intersection of rigorous scholarship, contemporary art practice, and public engagement,” Weaver said in a statement. “As the museum enters its important next chapter in its new home, I am excited to work with NYU’s distinguished faculty, students, and staff to expand the Gray Museum’s role as a laboratory of ideas and an important cultural resource for the city.”