NEW YORK, NY.- Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum, today announced the creation of an Executive Cabinet and the appointment of Ari Wiseman as a Deputy Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, a newly created position.

“The enormous vitality of the Guggenheim, here in New York and around the world, is inspiring. Our impressive program of exhibitions, education, conservation research, and performing arts, as well as the ambitious plan for a new museum in Abu Dhabi, made it apparent that to further distinguish ourselves, we must capitalize on strengths,” said Mr. Armstrong. “As a result, I have created an Executive Cabinet to focus on developing and implementing plans that will fortify our core missions. An integral part of this team will be Ari Wiseman.”

At the Guggenheim Museum and on behalf of the Foundation, Mr. Wiseman will work in concert with the Director, the Chief Operating Officer, and the newly created Executive Cabinet to help manage the activities of the Foundation and global network of museums. In this new role, Mr. Wiseman will work closely with trustees, donors, and other senior staff. He will assume a portfolio that includes strategic planning and global acquisitions policies. He will also assist the Director in a variety of special projects and in the arts and donor communities. Mr. Wiseman assumes his new role on January 19, 2010.

“We’re delighted to welcome Ari Wiseman to the Guggenheim,” stated Mr. Armstrong. “With an excellent track record of accomplishments at museums in New York and Los Angeles, his training at the Courtauld Institute, and his community work in contemporary-art projects in California, he is destined to be an invaluable asset. As the Guggenheim’s influence expands globally, the need for renewed strategic planning and vital relationships with donors, trustees, and audiences is critical to support our mission.”

Mr. Wiseman’s career has focused significantly on planning and acquisitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), since 2001, where he was Deputy Director since 2007. Prior to several promotions at MOCA, Mr. Wiseman served as Senior Assistant for Acquisitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Mr. Wiseman completed his MA in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art with a focus on postwar art. He has published on a number of subjects, including his most recent catalogue on the work of artist Matthew Monahan.

In addition to the newly appointed Deputy Director, the Executive Cabinet includes the following senior staff members:

Marc Steglitz, Senior Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer: Marc Steglitz joined the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in July 2002 as Chief Operating Officer. He served as Interim Director of the museum from September 2007 to December 2008. At the Foundation, his responsibilities include finance, administrative oversight of affiliate museums, human resources, information technology, facilities, security, visitor services, and exhibition management. Mr. Steglitz also oversaw the award-winning restoration of the Guggenheim Museum. Mr. Steglitz also is responsible for organizing Board subcommittee meetings of the Budget and Financial Planning, Audit, and Investment committees, and he serves on the Foundation’s Ethics and Strategic Planning committees.

Prior to joining the Guggenheim, Mr. Steglitz was a Managing Director at Credit Suisse First Boston, responsible for a variety of risk-management functions. Prior to Credit Suisse First Boston, he worked at Bankers Trust Company, where his last position was Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer for the Bank’s derivative business.

Mr. Steglitz completed his BA at the University of Michigan and his MS at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the advisory board for the University of Michigan School of Art and is on the board of Nikko Securities, USA.

Juan Ignacio Vidarte, Deputy Director and Chief Officer for Global Strategies: Juan Ignacio Vidarte, also currently Director General of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, divides his time between Bilbao and New York, where he is in charge of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project. As Chief Officer for Global Strategies, he is responsible for initiating and implementing new ventures outside existing Foundation activities. Mr. Vidarte’s involvement with the Guggenheim Foundation began in 1992 when, as Managing Director of the Consortium for the Guggenheim Bilbao Project, he oversaw the construction of the museum in Bilbao. In 1996, the Board of Trustees of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Foundation appointed Mr. Vidarte Director General.

Under his management, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has become an internationally acclaimed institution that has welcomed more than 11 million visitors. The museum features exhibitions organized by the Guggenheim Foundation, selections from the Foundation’s extended collection, and several site-specific sculptures and installations by contemporary artists. The museum also presents the work of Basque artists and commissions works by the world’s most important artists specifically conceived for the unique architectural context of the museum. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Gold Medal in Fine Arts in 1999; the European Museum Forum Museum of the Year Award in 2000; the Tourist Appeal Award in 2005; and the EFQM Silver Q Award for Management Quality.

Mr. Vidarte has published numerous articles and delivered talks on the museum’s management model and its economic impact, including an appearance before the British House of Commons, where he delivered a paper titled “The Bilbao Effect.”

Previously Mr. Vidarte served as Director of the Institute for Territorial Studies of Bizkaia, beginning in 1986; was appointed General Director for Territorial Action of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia in 1988; and a year later was named General Director of Fiscal and Financial Policy, also in the Provincial Council of Bizkaia.

Sarah Austrian, Deputy Director and General Counsel: Sarah Austrian joined the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in September 2006 as General Counsel. She is responsible for advising the Board of Trustees, its committees, and the Director and departments on all legal issues involving the Foundation and its affiliates, on policy issues, and on corporate governance. She is responsible for planning Board meetings and serves on the Foundation’s Ethics and Strategic Planning Committees.

Formerly Ms. Austrian had extensive experience relating to joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, contractual arrangements, international transactions and operational issues, real-estate transactions, corporate sponsorship and philanthropy, financings, and the development of corporate policies. From 2002 to 2006, Ms. Austrian was Vice President of Domestic Tax at PepsiCo, where she provided leadership in U.S. federal and state tax planning, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions and operations. As a Senior Attorney at AT&T Corp., she focused on federal income taxation and played a significant role in AT&T’s divestitures of NCR, Liberty Media, and AT&T Wireless and in AT&T Broadband’s merger with Comcast. Ms. Austrian also practiced for seven years in the tax department of the law firm of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler.

She is a magna cum laude graduate of Brown University and received her JD from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she served as an editor of theGeorgetown Law Journal.

Eleanor Goldhar, Deputy Director and Chief of Global Communications: Ms. Goldhar’s career combines experience in public and private-sector communications, marketing, public relations, development, tourism, and strategic planning. She joined the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation as Deputy Director, External Affairs, in June 2007. Ms. Goldhar is responsible for global branding initiatives across the museum network, and in New York she directs marketing, public and media relations, and the Web communications teams. Previously she served as Executive Officer, External Affairs, at the 92nd Street Y, where her responsibilities included strategic planning, branding and marketing communications, customer service, sponsorship, creative and Web services, and media relations. Formerly Ms. Goldhar was Vice President of Publicity & Corporate Relations at Livent Inc., a Tony Award–winning producer of Broadway and touring productions. At Livent, she was responsible for worldwide planning and management of all publicity, corporate relations, promotions, and publications for all shows. Ms. Goldhar also served as Director of Communications & Research at the Ontario Arts Council and was head of Programs & Public Relations at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where she was responsible for marketing, publicity, and public programming.

Educated in Toronto at York University and the University of Toronto, her doctoral work and teaching career focused on theater and dramatic literature. Ms. Goldhar is an accredited member of the International Association of Business Communicators, from which she has received the Golden Quill Award of Excellence. Ms. Goldhar publishes and is a frequent lecturer on marketing communications, media, and arts research and advocacy.

Kim Kanatani, Deputy Director and Gail Engelberg Director of Education: Kim Kanatani is responsible for working with the education programs at the Guggenheim Museums worldwide in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Ms. Kanatani also directs the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the museum in New York, a facility that serves as an educational hub and learning laboratory for program offerings in modern and contemporary art for adults, youth, and families. Working with artists as collaborative partners in program development and experimentation with new technologies are among the Center’s hallmarks.

Active in museum education since 1981, she has co-produced multimedia productions, educational installations, and public offerings in collaboration with artists including Matthew Barney, Daniel Buren, Cai Guo-Qiang, Paul McCarthy, Catherine Opie, Gabriel Orozco, and James Rosenquist. She has also published curriculum, resource materials, and articles on contemporary art and museum education.

Honored with several professional awards, she was named the National Art Museum Educator of the Year by the National Art Education Association in 1999. She also served as an art-education delegate to China to engage in a professional exchange with museum education colleagues and directors in Shanghai, Changsha, and Beijing in 2008. Currently, as a museum scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute, she is focusing on the development of a museumeducation program for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum. Ms. Kanatani holds an MA in art education with teaching credentials in elementary and adult education. Prior to joining the Guggenheim in 2001, she was the Director of Education at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which she joined in 1985.

Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator: As Chief Curator, Nancy Spector oversees the acquisition strategy for the permanent collection and the global exhibition calendar for the institution and its affiliates. She has organized exhibitions on conceptual photography, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Richard Prince, and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster cycle. She coorganized the collection exhibitions Moving Pictures and Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated). She was a co-curator of Monument to Now, an exhibition of the Dakis Joannou Collection, which premiered in Athens as part of the 2004 Summer Olympics. She was Adjunct Curator of the 1997 Venice Biennale and coorganizer of the first Berlin Biennale in 1998. Under the auspices of the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, she has initiated special commissions by Andreas Slominski, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Lawrence Weiner as well as an exhibition comparing the work of Joseph Beuys and Matthew Barney. She has contributed to numerous books on contemporary visual culture, with essays on artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Tino Sehgal, and Luc Tuymans. She has served as a regular columnist for Frieze magazine. In 2007 she was the U.S. Commissioner for the Venice Biennale, where she presented an exhibition of work by Felix Gonzalez- Torres. Ms. Spector is a recipient of the Peter Norton Family Foundation Curators Award. She recently organized a group exhibition titled theanyspacewhatever for the Guggenheim and is currently working on a large-scale exhibition of Tino Sehgal’s work. Ms. Spector received her MA in Art History from the Clark Art Institute at Williams College and her MPhil from CUNY Graduate Center.

Carol Stringari, Deputy Director and Chief Conservator: Carol Stringari is responsible for developing policy and procedures for the care and treatment of the collection. She oversees an initiative to garner support for enhancing scholarship and the design of a new lab at the museum. She has lectured and published on the preservation of new media, ethical concerns in conservation, acrylic paint, and Minimalist painting. Ms. Stringari played a key role in formulating and implementing the Variable Media Initiative, an innovative methodology for documenting conceptual and ephemeral works for long-term preservation, working with contemporary artists to gain a thorough understanding of the material and conceptual underpinnings of their work. She co-curated Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice and curated Imageless, the culmination of a research project on the scientific analysis and experimental laser treatment of a damaged study painting by Ad Reinhardt. Ms. Stringari is an adjunct professor at the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU) and a founding member of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art, and she serves on advisory boards for the preservation of new media and public art. She holds an art history degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an MS from the art conservation program at the Winterthur Museum. Prior to her tenure at the Guggenheim, she worked as a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She has also worked on numerous on-site projects in Europe, including the implementation of the inaugural exhibition and lab design of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.