Leadership

Maxwell Anderson is the founder and principal of the Art Museum Network. Over his almost thirty years as a museum director, he led five museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and the Dallas Museum of Art. He serves today as president of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. He began his career by serving for seven years as a curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1981-87).

A former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, he has advised heads of state, government agencies, ministries of cultures, and museums in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States. His clients have ranged from HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco to the Director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, to the directors of the National Gallery of Australia and Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, and multiple other individuals and institutions globally.

He is also Senior Advisor at Ennead Lab, the research arm of Ennead Architects. As the former client of some of the world’s leading architects, including Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman, and Rem Koolhaas, he brings the experience of museum boards and administrators seeking architectural solutions to their needs.

A former principal with AEA Consulting and former Executive Director of NewCities, Dr. Anderson serves as chairman emeritus of the Global Cultural Districts Network, an international federation committed to improving the quality of urban life through the contribution of the arts, culture and creative industries.

He earned an A.B. with highest distinction in art history at Dartmouth College (1977), and A.M. (1978) and Ph.D. (1981) degrees from the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. He was decorated as a Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Knight Commander in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic) in 1990, and as Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic) in 2010.

Dr. Anderson has published dozens of articles and the monograph Pompeian Frescoes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1987) along with two books: The Quality Instinct (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2012) and Antiquities: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2016).