Caroline Baumann is the director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
She is currently spearheading the grand opening of the renovated and expanded museum in December 2014—a $91 million transformation that will create immersive museum spaces and participatory visitor experiences never before seen in the museum realm. Baumann and her team have forged multiple national and international partnerships in recent years, as they advance the museum’s mission to inspire, educate, and empower people through design.
Since joining Cooper-Hewitt in 2001, Baumann has served as director of development, director of external affairs and deputy director. As director of external affairs from 2003 to 2006, Baumann oversaw development, membership, special events, operations, finance, and retail. In 2006, Baumann was appointed deputy director, focusing on the museum’s Re:Design capital campaign, the most ambitious in the museum’s history, which will result in a dramatic reconfiguration of Cooper-Hewitt, a major increase in the museum’s endowment and secure support for the museum’s many programs. In her role as deputy director, she also supervised development, membership, special events, and retail.
From 1995 to 2001, Baumann worked at The Museum of Modern Art, where she raised funds for the museum’s Yoshio Taniguchi building project among other accomplishments. Before that, she served as director of development at the Calhoun School in Manhattan. Prior to that, she worked at The Museum of Modern Art within the International Council program. She received a master’s degree in medieval art from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and a bachelor’s degree in French literature and the history of art from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.
