March 29: Why the Museum Matters ft. Daniel Weiss and Dorothy Kosinski

On March 29, 2023, Daniel H. Weiss, president and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, author of Why the Museum Matters and Dorothy Kosinski, director emerita, Phillips Collection, joined American Purpose by Zoom to discuss the role of art museums in our culture, their challenges, including collecting practices, and future. Jeffrey Gedmin, editor-in-chief of American Purpose, and Carolyn Stewart, managing editor, co-moderated.

Daniel H. Weiss is president and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and author of Why the Museum Matters. Weiss holds an MBA from Yale and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in western medieval and Byzantine art, where he joined the art history faculty and in six years rose to full professor and then chair of the department. He holds a BA in art history and psychology from George Washington University.

Dorothy Kosinski, director emerita of the Philips Collection, has earned a reputation internationally as an accomplished curator and scholar of 19th and 20th century art over the course of 30 years in museum work. Dr. Kosinski was senior curator of painting and sculpture at the Dallas Museum of Art and was also the museum’s Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art. In 2013, Dr. Kosinski was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Council on the Humanities.