Tweed Museum of Art

Anja Chávez has been the director of the Tweed Museum of Art since January 13, 2020. With an academic background as an art historian, she holds MA and PhD degrees from the University of Bonn, Germany, and attended the École Normale Supérieure and the Universite de Paris Sorbonne (Paris IV). Chávez has over two decades of museum experience in major international museums (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Lenbachhaus, Munich; MFA, Boston) and liberal arts colleges and universities such as Wellesley College, Syracuse University, and Colgate University. In her work at academic museums, she has consistently developed global programming, and involved students and faculty from multiple disciplines in the work of Western and non-Western artists. A recipient of international residencies (Beijing; Montreal; Tel Aviv/Jerusalem), she launched innovative exhibitions involving performance, sound, and street art while working with global artists of our times (Ghada Amer; Xu Bing, Steve McQueen, Nenga Sengudi; Alyson Shotz; Lawrence Weiner, etc.). Chávez produced high profile, innovative scholarly exhibitions, received AICA awards, and created partnerships across institutions and communities, at regional, national, and international levels. As a director, she has provided programmatic and administrative leadership in overseeing Colgate University Museums with collections totaling approx. 45,000 objects; finances and personnel, renovations, as well as strategic and long-range planning. Chávez is an AAM peer reviewer (American Alliance of Museums) and has chaired panels on museum topics, co-organized conferences, and been a speaker at AAMG, UMAC, and AAM conferences. She is a member of professional organizations (AAM, AAMG, ArtTable, ICOM) and is a Fellow of the Getty Leadership Institute (GLI 2018).