Associate Curator, Abu Dhabi Project

Guggenheim curator since 2004 

Since joining the curatorial staff in 2004, Valerie Hillings has curated and cocurated exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Deutsche Guggenheim, and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, including Russia!; Hanne Darboven's Hommage à Picasso; Modern Masters from the Guggenheim Collection; and Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s. She has also curated major presentations of works from the Guggenheim collection for venues in Abu Dhabi, Australia, and Germany. Hillings is currently part of the curatorial team building a permanent collection and developing exhibitions for the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

In addition to her Guggenheim projects, Hillings has published and publicly lectured on curatorial practice and on various topics in post–World War II art in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. She served on the jury for the Kandinsky Prize for Russian contemporary art in 2007, 2008, and 2009. She currently serves on the ZERO Foundation Scientific Board.

Hillings earned her BA in art history from Duke University and her MA and PhD in art history from Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she focused on modern and postwar art with concentrations in Russian art and Western European art in the 1950s and 1960s.