UNC Greensboro (UNCG) today announced the appointment of Juliette Bianco as Director of the Weatherspoon Art Museum and adjunct faculty in the College of Visual and Performing Arts as of September 1. Juliette will succeed Nancy Doll, who steps down on July 31 after 22 years of dedicated and successful service. Ann Grimaldi, Weatherspoon’s Curator for Education, will serve as acting director for August, and Nancy will be available to Juliette during her transition later this year.

Bianco has 25 years of experience as an art museum professional. She comes to UNCG from the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, her undergraduate alma mater, where she has served in various leadership capacities, including Deputy Director since 2013. The American Alliance of Museums calls the Hood Museum a "national model" for college and university museums. She oversaw the museum’s operations and a recent $50M museum renovation and expansion, managed exhibition planning and design, and led strategic plan development.

Her scholarly interests focus on transformational leadership in higher education and university museums as centers of innovative teaching and learning and hubs for exploring diversity, creative partnerships, and the benefits of strategic planning. In addition to curating and co-curating numerous exhibitions including those of artists Wenda Gu, Stacey Steers, and Edward Burtynsky, Bianco has published on art and museum practice, including Off the Shelf: A Conversation with MANUAL (Gulf Coast, 2015) and Go with the Flow: Fluxus at Play in a Teaching Museum (Museums, Etc. 2011). Needless to say, her experience and philosophy align completely with UNCG’s mission and giant steps mentality.

Bianco holds a master’s degree in art history from the University of Chicago and is a graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute’s residence program for museum administrators. She completed the Doctor of Education degree at Northeastern University in 2020.

"Provost Dana Dunn and I would like to thank the search committee and search chairs Margaret Benjamin and Peter Alexander, whose efforts and expertise saw us through the search to this very successful conclusion,” said UNCG Chancellor Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. “We welcome Juliette and thank Nancy Doll, whose outstanding leadership has been transformative, resulting in significant increases in non-student attendance, loan requests from major museums on a global scale, fundraising, and enhanced curricular incorporation across a wide array of disciplines. Juliette is well prepared to further this legacy and continue to grow the Museum’s impact on this campus, this community, and beyond.”

"I am thrilled and honored to be joining the Weatherspoon Art Museum," stated Juliette Bianco, "an institution with an inspiring legacy and diverse collection that I have long admired, as well as the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and the Greensboro community. Engaging with the art of our times has never been more important than now, and I look forward to leading the Weatherspoon’s efforts to provide a place for campus and community to learn, collaborate, and grow together."

Photo: Eli Burakian–Dartmouth College.

About the Weatherspoon Art Museum

Mission
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro acquires, preserves, exhibits, and interprets modern and contemporary art for the benefit of its multiple audiences, including university, community, regional, and beyond. Through these activities, the museum recognizes its paramount role of public service, and enriches the lives of diverse individuals by fostering an informed appreciation and understanding of the visual arts and their relationship to the world in which we live.

History
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro was founded by Gregory Ivy in 1941 and is the earliest of any art facilities within the UNC system. The museum was founded as a resource for the campus, community, and region and its early leadership developed an emphasis—maintained to this day—on presenting and acquiring modern and contemporary works of art. A 1950 bequest from the renowned collection of Claribel and Etta Cone, which included prints and bronzes by Henri Matisse and other works on paper by American and European modernists, helped to establish the Weatherspoon’s permanent collection. Other prescient acquisitions during Ivy’s tenure included a 1951 suspended mobile by Alexander Calder, Woman by Willem de Kooning, a pivotal work in the artist’s career that was purchased in 1954, and the first drawings by Eva Hesse and Robert Smithson to enter a museum collection.

In 1989, the museum moved into its present location in The Anne and Benjamin Cone Building designed by the architectural firm Mitchell/Giurgola. The museum has six galleries and a sculpture courtyard with over 17,000 square feet of exhibition space. The American Association of Museums accredited the Weatherspoon in 1995 and renewed its accreditation in 2005.

Collections + Exhibitions
The permanent collection of the Weatherspoon Art Museum is considered to be one of the foremost of its kind in the Southeast. It represents all major art movements from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Of the nearly 7,000 works in the collection are pieces by such prominent figures as Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Cindy Sherman, Al Held, Alex Katz, Henry Tanner, Louise Nevelson, Mark di Suvero, Deborah Butterfield, and Robert Rauschenberg. The museum regularly lends to major exhibitions nationally and internationally.

The Weatherspoon also is known for its adventurous and innovative exhibition program. Through a dynamic annual calendar of fifteen to eighteen exhibitions and a multi-disciplinary educational program for audiences of all ages, the museum provides an opportunity for audiences to consider artistic, cultural, and social issues of our time and enriches the life of our university, community, and region.

UNC Greensboro
UNC Greensboro, located in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, is 1 of only 50 doctoral institutions recognized by the Carnegie Foundation for both higher research activity and community engagement. Founded in 1891 and one of the original three UNC system institutions, UNC Greensboro is one of the most diverse universities in the state with 20,000+ students, and 2,700+ faculty and staff members representing 90+ nationalities. With 17 Division I athletic teams, 85 undergraduate degrees in over 125 areas of study, as well as 74 master’s and 32 doctoral programs, UNC Greensboro is consistently recognized nationally among the top universities for academic excellence and value, with noted strengths in health and wellness, visual and performing arts, nursing, education, and more. For additional information, please visit uncg.edu and follow UNCG on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.


Weatherspoon Art Museum
UNC Greensboro
Spring Garden and Tate Streets, PO Box 26170
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, (336) 334-5770, weatherspoon@uncg.edu

For more information or press images, contact:
Loring Mortensen, (336) 256-1451, lamorten@uncg.edu