Darren Walker to Lead National Gallery of Art
Ford Foundation president Darren Walker has been elected president of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the institution announced today. He will assume his new position immediately, acting as liaison between gallery director Kaywin Feldman and the board of trustees, led by chairman David Rubenstein. Walker succeeds billionaire art collector Mitchell Rales, founder of the private contemporary art museum Glenstone, in the institution-shaping role, which is part-time and unpaid.
As president of the Ford Foundation, one of the country’s largest and most prominent philanthropic concerns, Walker has overseen the distribution of more than $7 billion in grants to arts and cultural organizations and expanded the foundation’s remit to include the addressing of inequality. He is stepping down from his role there at the end of next year. A board member of the National Gallery of Art since 2019, he is the museum’s first Black trustee. In this capacity, he championed diversity and was instrumental in bringing to the institution the 2022 exhibition “Afro-Atlantic Histories,” which originated at the São Paulo Museum of Art and investigated the trade of enslaved people in North and South America. Through Ford Foundation funding, he aided the National Gallery in its 2023 acquisition of the Ross J. Kelbaugh Collection of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American photographs.
Speaking with the Washington Post, Walker said he intends to expand the National Gallery’s private fundraising, bringing his own extensive experience and deep network of contacts to bear. “In my role at Ford, I work with dozens of cultural organizations and see best practices and sometimes not-good practices, so the wisdom that comes with twenty-five years of being in philanthropy and working with nonprofits positions me well for this role,” he told the paper.
Walker affirmed diversity as key to the museum’s success but noted that achieving it was just one of his goals for the museum. “Let me be really clear,” he told the Post. “The National Gallery must be about excellence. Everything we do has to be excellent and worthy of being our nation’s gallery.”
