Museum Leadership

As Director of the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin, Simone Wicha provides strategic leadership for one of the country’s leading university art museums. She oversees all aspects of operations, advancing the Blanton’s mission as a center for research, teaching, and the care and display of art. Under her leadership, the museum has significantly expanded its national profile and cemented its role as a gateway to the university, and as Austin’s flagship art museum.

During Wicha’s fifteen-year tenure as director, attendance has doubled to over 250,000 annual visitors, making the Blanton one of the most highly attended university museums in the U.S. and the third most visited art museum in Texas. Annual attendance now includes 25,000 students from The University of Texas at Austin, 8,000 K-12 students from schools throughout Central Texas, Austinites, alumni, and tourists from around the world.

Wicha worked closely with artist Ellsworth Kelly and his studio to realize Austin, the artist’s most monumental work, which helped propel the Blanton and Austin, Texas into renowned destinations for the arts. Additionally, she spearheaded a major project with the architecture firm Snøhetta to reimagine the museum’s grounds and create vibrant outdoor spaces for the community to gather, including a landmark mural by Carmen Herrera and an outdoor sound gallery. An innovative new café partnership with Justine’s Brasserie will further extend Wicha’s goal of making the museum a cultural hub for Austin and the university campus.

To advance new scholarship, Wicha recruited a distinguished team of curators whose work on the collection has resulted in major exhibitions and publications that have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Artforum, Art in America, and other press outlets. The collection has doubled to more than 22,000 works of art during her tenure, with acquisitions that build upon core areas of the collection, as well add new strengths in areas like Latino art and the Art of the Spanish Americas. She led a complete reinstallation of the museum’s permanent collection and a multi-year initiative to secure transformational gifts of art, culminating in the Shaping the Future exhibition. 

Wicha redefined the museum’s educational mission and built a nationally recognized team of educators. She expanded the Blanton’s university engagement efforts into a program dedicated to supporting object-based teaching and curricular connections across all disciplines. This has led to dramatic growth in UT class visits, from approximately 5,000 students to more than 14,000 students in 2025 across 300 courses spanning all 19 UT colleges and schools. In addition, Wicha spearheaded the creation of a fellowship program for UT graduate students. Students mentored through this program over the last decade now hold positions at major museums across the country. The Blanton continues to play an integral role for K-12 students from Austin and expanding into the surrounding areas, now serving 40 districts and 170 schools. 

To better support the scale of museum operations and facilities, and to invest in growth reflective of the excellence of the university and community we serve, Wicha led philanthropic campaigns that resulted in $214 million in giving for the Blanton, including gifts from 15,000 first-time donors to UT. The museum’s admission revenue also grew from $240,000 to $1.4 million annually. These efforts have doubled both the museum’s annual operating budget and the museum’s endowment value.

Under Wicha’s leadership, the Blanton has received national and international attention in publications ranging from Forbes to The Art Newspaper and The Guardian. A 2024 The New York Times article highlighted Wicha’s role in shaping a museum “that stands out on campus, in the city, and in the art world.” She has been featured in The Texas Observer’s list of “51 Artists, Curators, Directors and Dealers Changing the Art World,” Austin Woman’s “Portraits of Power,” and Tribeza’s “People of the Year.” In 2020, she penned an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal about the challenges of managing a museum during the pandemic. She currently serves as a board member of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

Wicha’s experience includes positions at the Noguchi Museum, The Juilliard School, and the Hispanic Heritage Awards at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Wicha was born in Texas, raised in Mexico City, and is a proud graduate of The University of Texas at Austin.