The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has tapped Melissa Chiu to be the director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Chiu, a veteran institutional leader, will depart from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., where she has been director since 2014.

Chiu, who is scheduled to start on September 1, will report to Mariët Westermann, who will now lead the Guggenheim’s international “constellation,” as the foundation put it in a press release. The New York Times, which first reported the news, said that Westermann will step back from daily management of the New York Guggenheim to manage the other Guggenheim institutions around the world, in Bilbao, Spain, and Venice, Italy. Her remit will also cover the Guggenheim currently under construction in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Chiu is the second leader to leave the Hirshhorn for the Guggenheim recently, the Times noted. The Hirshhorn’s former chairman, Daniel Sallick, joined the Guggenheim’s board in 2024 after eight years in that role.

Chiu is the fourth director of a Smithsonian museum to depart in the roughly two years since President Donald J. Trump returned to office.

The Trump’s administration has undertaken efforts to shutter diversity and equity initiatives and reorient historical narratives at the Smithsonian. The National Portrait Gallery‘s director, Kim Sajet, resigned last year, after Trump criticized her support for diversity initiatives. She now leads the Milwaukee Art Museum.

In an interview with the Times, Chiu denied suggestions that the current environment in Washington influenced her choice to leave. The new position, she said, is “a dream job,” and that she would have accepted it “under any circumstance.”

Under her direction, Chiu said, she raised nearly $250 million and tripled the size of the museum’s board, bringing on international members for the first time. She also oversaw a redesign of the museum’s sculpture garden that is slated to open in October.