NEW YORK.- On July 30, Thomas Krens, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, announced the resignation of Lisa Dennison, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Ms. Dennison has accepted a position at Sotheby’s as Executive Vice President of Sotheby’s North America.

The Board of Trustees and senior management are forming a search committee and preparing a plan for interim leadership of the Museum. Marc Steglitz, COO of both the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, will serve as interim director of the Museum beginning September 1, reporting to Mr. Krens and the board, as did Ms. Dennison.

“Lisa Dennison has proved to be one of the Guggenheim’s greatest assets,” said Mr. Krens. “When I first came to the Guggenheim, Lisa was an assistant curator. She has flourished over the years, assuming an increasingly important leadership role in the international development of the Guggenheim. During her tenure as director, Lisa has strengthened the visibility and reputation of the Guggenheim Museum as an extraordinary cultural resource in New York and helped the Museum realize its institutional goals as the flagship of our global network. We wish her the greatest success in her new endeavors.”

“We are very grateful to Lisa for her tremendous contributions and we wish her well,” said William Mack, Chairman of the Foundation. “Recruiting her successor will be a priority for the board and we will begin that process immediately.”

“It has been an honor to serve the Guggenheim for almost 29 years,” said Dennison. “I am proud of the Guggenheim staff, which manages one of the world's most successful and important art museums. I know they are ready to create an even more exciting future. The development department has been revitalized, and we have a strong and creative curatorial faculty, who are already developing new initiatives related to Asian art, and to architecture.”

Prior to her appointment as Director of the Museum in September 2005, Ms. Dennison had been Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Guggenheim since 1996, and was a member of the Curatorial Department since 1978, during which time she organized 35 major exhibitions and helped to strengthen the permanent collection.

From its headquarters in New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation operates museums in New York City, Bilbao (Spain), Venice (Italy), Berlin (Germany), and Las Vegas (Nevada), welcoming more than 2.5 million annually.