Kaywin Feldman is the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Appointed in 2019, she is the fifth director and first woman to lead the museum. She is responsible for the direction and vision of one of the most beloved and most frequently visited cultural destinations in the world.
Feldman’s vision for the National Gallery focuses on expanding the museum’s service to the nation. She has initiated new programs and exhibitions that have increased audience engagement and the number of first-time visitors, and she has expanded the museum’s digital platforms. Dedicated to connecting people to art through the power of wonder, Feldman has established visitor experience and digital content divisions that now create meaningful audience experiences, both onsite and online. In expanding the national collection to represent a wider spectrum of art history, she not only is overseeing important acquisitions of works by celebrated American artists, such as Joseph Cornell, Simone Leigh, George Morrison, and Faith Ringgold, but she is also deepening historical holdings through strategic additions of paintings by Adriaen Coorte, Dosso Dossi, Lavinia Fontana, and Anne Vallayer-Coster.
Prior to joining the National Gallery, Feldman served as the Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) for 11 years. While there, she oversaw a 50 percent increase in annual attendance, expanded the collection, launched and completed visionary strategic plans, and transformed Mia’s relationship to the Twin City community and to the nation through groundbreaking initiatives, such as the Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts. She served as director of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art from 1999 to 2007 and the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science from 1995 to 1999.
Feldman was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024. She is a member of the board of directors of the Terra Foundation for American Art, a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the White House Historical Association, a member of the leadership board of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and an ex-officio member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. She is a past president of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and a past chair of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). In 2021, Forbes magazine named Feldman one of the “50 Over 50” most visionary women making an impact on society today.
Feldman received an MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London; an MA in museum studies from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London; and a BA in classical archaeology from the University of Michigan, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She lectures and publishes widely on many aspects of museums in the 21st century. Her forthcoming book on leadership transitions for museums and arts organizations will be published by Rowman & Littlefield in November 2024.
Feldman lived in the Washington area during junior high school and took her first trip to the National Gallery with her 7th-grade French class.