NASSAU COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
Karl E.
Willers, Ph.D.
Appointed Director of Nassau County Museum of Art
Peter Tilles, the president of Nassau County Museum of Art’s (NCMA) Board of
Trustees, announced that Karl E. Willers, Ph.D. has been appointed Director of
the Museum.
Dr. Willers brings with him a wealth of administrative and curatorial experience
at both major urban and focused regional museums. A leader in the museum field,
Dr. Willers has published extensively on a broad range of topics, ranging over
American and European art from the late 18th century to the present. His many
awards and fellowships included an honorable mention in last year’s AAM Museum
Publications Design competition for the catalogue COLLECTOR: The Collection of
Elizabeth Brooke Blake.
Karl Emil Willers holds a Ph.D. in art history from Yale Graduate School and an
M.B.A. from Yale School of Management. He enjoyed a lengthy association with the
Whitney Museum of American Art beginning while still an undergraduate at Ohio’s
College of Wooster. During the 1980’s, he became Director of the Whitney
Museum’s Downtown Branch where he organized many exhibitions of 20th-century
American art. Following completion of his graduate work at Yale, he returned to
the Whitney Museum as Associate Curator and Administrative Coordinator for The
American Century: Art and Culture 1950-2000 exhibition, an ambitious survey of
post-war American art. At the conclusion of that project, Dr. Willers served as
Chief Curator and Curator of European Art at the Norton Museum in West Palm
Beach, and then as Curator at the Samuel Dorksy Museum at SUNY New Paltz, one of
the principal art venues in the mid Hudson Valley. Beginning in 2006, he was
appointed Executive Director of the Newport Art Museum where he was active in
establishing cooperative ventures amongst cultural non-profits within Rhode
Island.
Constance Schwartz, NCMA’s previous director, has been appointed Director
Emeritus and will guide efforts to raise funds for the museum’s capital
campaign.
Ranked among the nation’s most important suburban art museums, Nassau County
Museum of Art is located 20 miles east of New York City on the former Frick
Estate, a spectacular 145-acre property in Roslyn Harbor in the heart of Long
Island’s fabled Gold Coast. The main museum building, named in honor of art
collectors and philanthropists Arnold & Joan Saltzman, is a three-story Georgian
mansion that exemplifies Gold Coast architecture of the late 19th century. In
addition to the mansion, NCMA, which receives nearly 200,000 visitors each year,
includes The Children’s Museum, the Sculpture Park, the Formal Garden, rare
specimen trees, marked walking trails and the Art School where an extensive
array of beginning to advanced art classes are held for adults and children.
Pandagraphics Design Studio