Overview
- The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi announced Hillings’s appointment on August 4, 2026, naming her inaugural director and chief executive to lead opening exhibitions, public programmes and launch operations.
- The Frank Gehry–designed museum is scheduled to open on December 11, 2026, and will be the largest Guggenheim branch with roughly 11,600 square metres of indoor gallery space and expansive outdoor exhibition areas.
- Hillings returns to the project after serving from 2009 to 2018 as curator and associate director of curatorial affairs and comes from the North Carolina Museum of Art, where she doubled attendance to about 1.2 million and added roughly 400 works.
- The museum’s permanent collection, developed since 2009, will focus on modern and contemporary art from the 1960s to the present and pair Western masters such as Pollock and Warhol with artists from Asia, Africa and the Arab world.
- Her appointment has reignited long‑running protests over reported exploitation of migrant construction workers on Saadiyat Island, a controversy that could affect public reception, calls for boycotts and pressure on institutional partners as the opening approaches.