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Royal Academy launches recruitment drive for new chief executive
Axel Rüger to move on to the Frick Collection in New York
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) in London has launched a recruitment drive after announcing that its secretary and chief executive Axel Rüger has been appointed director of the Frick Collection in New York.
Previously the director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Rüger began his role at the RA in 2019. During that time he has led the art gallery through the Covid pandemic, realised the Royal Academy Schools restoration project and developed a new five-year strategic plan.
He also oversaw many successful exhibitions, including Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch: The Loneliness of the Soul (2021), Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict (2021), Francis Bacon: Man and Beast (2022) and Marina Abramović (2023). He also curated Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South (2023) and the major Michael Craig-Martin retrospective, which opened at the RA this week.
Rüger said: “Being part of the leadership team at the RA has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. The past five years at the helm of this great institution have been challenging and immensely rewarding in equal measure.
"The RA is unique in being independent and artist-led, and I want to thank the president, Royal Academicians and the academy’s dedicated staff for their creative brilliance, help and support. I am sad to leave but to be asked to become the director of the Frick Collection in New York is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Rebecca Salter, president of the RA, said: “Axel has been a wonderful colleague and everyone at the RA owes him so much. His appointment at the Frick Collection is an incredible opportunity for Axel where he will be able to combine his art-historical background with the leadership of an institution that finds itself at a critical moment in its history – the opening after a substantial re-development and expansion of its buildings. We all wish him the best for the future.”
Rüger will take up his new post as director of the Frick Collection in Spring 2025.
The recruitment process has begun for a new secretary and chief executive of the RA.