Dr Maxwell L Anderson

GENEVA (Nov 27): New Cities Foundation (NCF) has appointed Dr Maxwell L Anderson (pictured) as its new executive director.

“The entire team of the New Cities Foundation are delighted that Max Anderson — one of the world’s leading experts on culture and art in an urban context — has agreed to lead the management team of the Foundation.

“At the same time, we wish to thank outgoing executive director Mathieu Lefevre for his dedication and leadership over the past five years,” said New Cities Foundation chairman John Rossant in a press statement on Nov 24.

Anderson joined New Cities Foundation and its executive leadership team in September 2015, and has headed leading cultural institutions across North America, with the most recent endeavour being the Dallas Museum of Art wherein he mounted major programming, acquisitions and capital projects.

“It is a great honour to serve the New Cities Foundation in this new role,” Anderson remarked.

“The leading attractions in cities are often their museums, and over three decades I have devoted much of my time and energy to bolstering the reputation of five great North American cities through arts and culture. I relish the opportunity to deepen my involvement in the Foundation’s four focus areas of urban mobility, urban infrastructure and services, health and wellness, and placemaking.”

“It has been a remarkable privilege to help lead the New Cities Foundation since its genesis. I know that Max will be bringing an enormous amount of knowledge and insight to the foundation and will help bring the NCF and its work in the urban field to even greater global prominence,” said outgoing executive director Levefre.

Anderson served as director of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto from 1995 to 1998 and was vital in promoting cultural tourism and placemaking, organising major international exhibitions and building the museum’s relevance in the emergent digital landscape.

From 1998 to 2003, Anderson worked as director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and was responsible for establishing its place in the top tier of the city’s attractions.

Anderson currently chairs the Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN), a New Cities Foundation initiative, being instrumental in both its conception and launch in 2014. The GCDN is a federation of global centres of arts and culture that fosters cooperation and knowledge-sharing among those who conceive, fund, build and operate cultural districts.

Having lived in France, Great Britain, Italy and Canada, Anderson was decorated by Italy in 1990 as a Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Knight Commander in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic) and by France in 2010 as Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Art et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Art and Letters).

Established in 2010, The New Cities Foundation is a non-profit organisation that aims to drive economic, social and environmental progress in cities through encouraging urban innovation and entrepreneurship — carried out through empowering its global network, convening events and conducting research.

This story first appeared in The Edge Property pullout on Nov 27, 2015, which comes with The Edge Financial Daily every Friday. Download The Edge Property here for free.

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