Maria Nicanor is a

Spanish-American Spanish Americans (, ''hispanoestadounidenses'', or ''hispanonorteamericanos'') are Americans whose Spaniards, ancestry originates wholly or partly from Spain. They are the longest-established European Americans, European American group in t ...

museum curator specializing in design and history of architecture. She has held significant positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Guggenheim, and the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt Museum.

Early life and education

Nicanor was born in Barcelona. Her father is a filmmaker; her mother is a lawyer specializing in intellectual property in the arts. Nicanor received a bachelor's degree from the

Autonomous University of Madrid The Autonomous University of Madrid (; UAM), commonly known as la Autónoma, is a Spanish public university located in Madrid, Spain. The university was founded in 1968 by royal decree. UAM is widely respected as one of the most prestigious univ ...

, with a major in the theory and history of architecture. She also studied at the

Sorbonne University Sorbonne University () is a public research university located in Paris, France. The institution's legacy reaches back to the Middle Ages in 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de Sorbon as a constituent college of the Unive ...

and completed a master's degree in museum studies at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

Career

She was the first director of the

Norman Foster Foundation Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank (born 1 June 1935) is an English architect. Closely associated with the development of high-tech architecture, Lord Foster is recognised as a key figure in British modernist architecture. His ...

in Madrid. She was the architecture and design curator at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

in London. Nicanor had various roles at the

Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: * The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Ne ...

in New York from 2003 and 2013 including a role as the curator of architecture and design. She was the leader of the team for the traveling laboratory called the

BMW Guggenheim Lab The BMW Guggenheim Lab was a collaboration between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the BMW Group between 2011 and 2013. Part urban think tank, part community center and part gathering space, the interdisciplinary mobile laboratory explore ...

. She became the executive director of the Rice Design Alliance at the

Rice University School of Architecture Rice School of Architecture, also referred to as ''Rice Architecture'', is the architecture school of Rice University in Houston, Texas. The graduate and undergraduate programs in architecture foreground design, history/theory, technology, and cult ...

in 2017.

References

Spanish women curators Spanish architectural historians Spanish women historians Museum administrators Directors of museums in Spain Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Spanish curators {{US-academic-bio-stub