James Cuno has been President and Director of the Art Institute of Chicago since September 2004.  As Director he oversaw the completion of the Modern Wing.  Designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Renzo Piano, the Modern Wing provides a new home for the museum’s collection of 20th- and 21st-century art. Now a decade in the making, this 264,000 square-foot building makes the Art Institute the second largest art museum in the United States.  Before the Art Institute he served as Professor and Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London from 2002-2004, and as Professor and Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums from 1991-2002.

A top flight scholar, with a remarkable reputation, James Cuno has written and lectured extensively—throughout the U.S., Europe, and Japan—on topics ranging from French caricature of the 18th and 19th centuries to contemporary American Art, as well as on the role of art museums in contemporary American cultural policy. His latest book is Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate Over Antiquity, published in Spring 2009 by Princeton University Press.