Maxwell L. Anderson
Maxwell L. Anderson has been the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art since January 2012. Anderson was Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University from 1987 to 1995, where he inaugurated a series of international loan projects seeking alternatives to buying antiquities from illicit trade. He was director of the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1998 to 2003 and The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art prior to arriving at the Dallas Museum of Art.
In 2002, Anderson co-authored an op-ed piece in The Washington Post warning against looting of museums and destruction of sites in the event of an invasion of Iraq, and he helped lead a delegation to the Pentagon to press the case. Anderson is the author of “Metrics of Success for Art Museums” (2004), an essay for the Getty Leadership Institute. He has launched two consecutive projects to build international libraries of digital media documenting the collections and activities of art museums—one for still images (AMICO), and one for video (ArtBabble).
Anderson is former chair of the Art Issues Committee, where shortly after September 11, 2001, he introduced a successful motion to forego terrorism insurance, assuring that U.S. and international loan exhibitions could continue uninterrupted. He led the formation in 2011 of a partnership between the Association of Art Museum Directors and the United Negro College Fund to create a national program incentivizing students of color to enter the art museum profession.
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