President
Dorothy Lichtenstein has been active in the New York contemporary art scene since the early 1960s. After attending Beaver College she worked at the Paul Bianchini Gallery, organizing exhibitions and projects dealing with emerging Pop art, and with William Copley, editing and publishing portfolios of artists’ works for The Letter Edged in Black Press. She married Roy Lichtenstein in 1968. The French Ministry of Culture and Communication made her an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2001.
Chairman of the Board
Ruth Fine is the Chair of the Foundation, elected January 2013. She recently retired from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., where she held several posts over four decades, the last as Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art.
During her distinguished career Ms. Fine organized numerous exhibitions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American art, from John Marin and Georgia O’Keeffe to Jasper Johns and Romare Bearden. Ms. Fine was curator of the 1994 exhibition The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein and coordinated the definitive Roy Lichtenstein print catalogue raisonné which accompanied that exhibition.
Ms. Fine continues to publish widely and work independently on exhibitions and to serve on the boards of several art foundations. Trained at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts, Philadelphia), the University of Pennsylvania, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, she taught studio art before starting her curatorial career.
Executive Director
Jack Cowart, founding Executive Director of the Foundation, was previously Deputy Director/Chief Curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (1992–99), Head of the Department of 20th-Century Art at the National Gallery of Art (1983–92), and held prior museum curatorial posts in St. Louis and Hartford. Dr. Cowart received his PhD in the history of art from the Johns Hopkins University (1972), and is a widely published and recognized authority on Roy Lichtenstein and Henri Matisse as well as on other American and European twentieth-century modern and contemporary art and artists. He was made a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in 2001.
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Elizabeth C. Baker was editor of Art in America from 1974 to 2008. She remains associated with the magazine as editor-at-large for special projects. Ms. Baker studied art history at Bryn Mawr (BA) and Harvard (MA and completed coursework for PhD), and was a Fulbright scholar in Paris. Before joining Art in America, she was associate editor and then managing editor of Art News. She has taught history of art at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Wheaton College in Norton, MA, and Boston University, and became friends with Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein in the mid-1960s. Ms. Baker is currently on the Museum of Modern Art Library Advisory Committee. In recent years she has been the recipient of awards for service to the arts given by ArtTable, Independent Curators Inc. and A.R.T. (Art Resources Transfer). She currently works as a freelance writer and editor.
Elizabeth Glassman is President Emerita of the Terra Foundation for American Art, an international organization dedicated to supporting the study and presentation of art of the United States worldwide. As President and CEO from 2001-2020, Ms. Glassman oversaw the foundation’s collection of American art as well as its partnership projects, including the first American art exhibitions to take place at the Musée du Louvre and in China, and the Art Design Chicago initiative. Currently, Ms. Glassman is consulting to SITE Santa Fe as Strategic Advisor to the board of directors during a leadership change at this contemporary art museum based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
With an expertise in works on paper, Ms. Glassman worked as a curator with numerous museums and collections, including the Menil Collection, Houston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Prior to joining the Terra Foundation, she established and then served as President of, the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. She was awarded the distinction of Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2012 and serves on the Board of Directors of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe.
Ms. Glassman holds master’s degrees in both business administration and art history from University of St Thomas, Houston, and University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, respectively.
Maria Morris Hambourg, a highly regarded art historian and curator, brings to the Foundation her extensive expertise in photography and modern art. After working for many years in the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art, she became the founding curator of the Department of Photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With numerous publications accompanying major historical and contemporary photography exhibitions, Dr. Hambourg has also dealt closely with photographic archives. She graduated from Wellesley College and received a master’s and a doctorate in art history from Columbia University. Her dissertation, based on archival research on the photographs of Eugene Atget, was the basis for The Work of Atget (four volumes, MoMA, 1981–85).
David Hoyt Lichtenstein is the elder son of Roy Lichtenstein. A graduate of Columbia University with a BS in electrical engineering, he is a recording engineer and a former rock musician. He plays the drums and composes electronic music.
Mitchell Wilson Lichtenstein is the younger son of Roy Lichtenstein. A graduate of Bennington College and the Yale School of Drama, he has acted in film, television and theater. He writes screenplays and directs films.
Leslie B. Samuels is a senior partner in the firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. From 1993 to 1996 Mr. Samuels was Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and a member of the President’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Mr. Samuels has also served on the Board of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
John W. Smith served as Director of the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design from 2011-2021, where he devoted his attention to strengthening the museum–college relationship, expanding access through increased free-admission policies, overseeing the design and development of new publishing and online initiatives, and expanding the museum’s curatorial expertise. From 2006 to 2011 he served as director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, the world’s leading research center devoted to the study of the visual arts of America. During his tenure, the Archives undertook a major initiative to increase online access to the collection. Smith also established the Archives’ first programs for publications and traveling exhibitions.
Prior to his work at the Archives of American Art, Smith served for eleven years at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, as assistant director for collections, exhibitions and research. He also served as interim director of the museum from 1995 to 1996. While there, he organized numerous exhibitions and published extensively on Warhol and his circle. In addition, Smith served as chief archivist at the Art Institute of Chicago (1990–94), visiting archivist at the Royal Opera House in London (1991), and as founding curator of the Archives and Special Collections at the Chicago Park District (1988–90). Smith received his BA in English from Southern Illinois University and undertook graduate work at the University of Illinois.
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Of Counsel: Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, New York
Founding Board Member Emeritus: Kenneth L. Goldglit (deceased)
Founding Board Member Emerita: Renee Lichtenstein Tolcott (deceased)