Spector has been a Guggenheim curator since 1989. At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, she has organized exhibitions and retrospectives on or of conceptual photography, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, Richard Prince, Louise Bourgeois, Marina Abramovic, Maurizio Cattelan and Tino Sehgal. She also organized the group exhibitions Moving Pictures, Singular Forms , and theanyspacewhatever. Under the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, Spector initiated special commissions by Andreas Slominski, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Lawrence Weiner. Spector was adjunct curator of the 1997 Venice Biennale and a co-curator of the first Berlin Biennale in 1998. In 2007 she was the U.S. Commissioner for the Venice Biennale, where she presented an exhibition of work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. She has written catalogue essays for exhibitions on Maurizio Cattelan, Luc Tuymans, Douglas Gordon, Tino Sehgal and Anna Gaskell among others. In 2017, when the White House requested the loan of a Vincent Van Gogh painting, from the Guggenheim collection, Landscape With Snow, Spector suggested instead, America - a sculpture of a gold toilet by Maurizio Cattelan. Spector is a recipient of the Peter Norton Family Foundation Curators Award and an International Art Critics Association Award. In 2014, she was named one of the top 25 most important women in the art world by Artnet. Additionally, Forbes named Spector on the "40 Women To Watch Over 40" list.
Controversy
On 5th November 2019, Spector hosted a panel for an exhibit in the Guggenheim called "Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story". This panel excluded Chaédria LaBouvier, the curator of the exhibit. LaBouvier had previously complained that the museum had made decisions for her exhibit without her consultation. She was also excluded from the deinstallation process, which is standard for curators to oversee. When LaBouvier raised this issue during the panel, Elizabeth Duggal, President of the Guggenheim Museum, said: "...I know you want to do this in a public forum, happy to talk separately..." and defended the decision by saying that the panel had acknowledged her efforts.
Select bibliography
Spector, Nancy, and Félix González-Torres. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1995.
Hanhardt, John G, Nancy Spector, Lisa Dennison, and Joan Young. Moving Pictures: Contemporary Photography and Video from the Guggenheim Museum Collections. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2003.
Spector, Nancy, Maurizio Cattelan, and Nancy Spector. Maurizio Cattelan: All. New York, NY: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2011.
Spector, Nancy. Theanyspacewhatever. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2008.
Dennison, Lisa, and Nancy Spector. Singular Forms : Art from 1951 to the Present. Guggenheim Museum. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004.
González-Torres, Félix, and Nancy Spector. Felix Gonzalez-Torres: America. United States Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007. New York, NY: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2007.
