Dora Maar Cultural center board of directors (USA)
Walter Negley
Walter Negley is president WN Global, which is a holding company for two heavy industrial product manufacturing concerns based in Houston, Texas. Other business affiliations include past board member of Highland Resources, a family-owned real estate company founded by Herman and George R. Brown, and the A. S. Gage Ranch, founded by family members in Brewster and Presidio Counties in West Texas in 1883. Walter has served as a board trustee for the Kinkaid School, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the Neuhaus Center, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Walter graduated from Trinity University in 1977 with a B.A. in Economics and attended the MBA program at the University of Texas at Austin. Walter grew up in San Antonio and now resides in Houston with his wife, Suzette, and three daughters.
Joseph Havel
Joseph Havel is a world-renowned artist who lives and works in Houston, Texas. In addition to his studio practice, Havel is Director of the Glassell School of Art and its acclaimed Core Residency Program. He has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe including solo museum exhibitions at The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead U.K., The Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, The Center for Contemporary Art, Kiev, and The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard, New York. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including the 2000 Whitney Biennial. His work is in public collections in the U.S. and abroad including The Whitney Museum, New York, The Modern Museum of Fort Worth, The Pompidou Center, Paris, The National Gallery, Washington, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium, The Ministry of Culture, Paris, The Menil Collection, Houston, The Dallas Museum of Art, Rice University, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has received a National Endowment of The Arts Fellowship in 1987, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship in 1995, Artadia Award in 2005. He was the 2013 Texas Visual Artist as recognized by the Texas Legislature and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
Dr. Gordon “Nick” Mueller
Dr. Gordon “Nick” Mueller is President and CEO Emeritus of The National World War II Museum. Dr. Mueller assisted historian Stephen Ambrose in founding the institution, initially known as The National D-Day Museum, and led the organization as Chairman of the Board from 1998 through its fundraising and construction to the Grand Opening on June 6, 2000. Before stepping into his second career in the museum world, Dr. Mueller enjoyed a 33-year career as Professor of European History at the University of New Orleans. During his tenure there he also served as Dean, Vice Chancellor and founding President of the Research and Technology Park. He is known as founder of UNO’s Metropolitan College, its regional campuses, Business-Higher Education Council, and the university’s International Study Programs, sending over 10,000 students to 10 countries for study abroad since 1973. He also served in leadership positions with national higher education associations and is a member of the University Continuing Education Hall of Fame. He earned his Bachelor’s degree at Stetson University, an MA and PhD at the University of North Carolina, and has done postgraduate work at Yale, Harvard and several European Universities.
Jean Malo
Jean Malo is a Managing Director and Manager of the International Equity and Global Equity Portfolios at Avalon Advisors. Jean has over 30 years of domestic and international investment management experience. During his career, he has worked and lived in Houston, New York, France, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. Prior to joining Avalon, Jean spent four years as Co-Founder of Houston Global Investors, a Houston-based Registered Investment Advisor, where he managed both global and international equity portfolios. Prior to Houston Global Investors, Jean was Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Breen Investors LP for eight years. From 2005 until its takeover by Johnson & Johnson in 2017, he was a board member and a member of the finance and audit committee of Actelion, the largest biopharmaceutical company in Europe. Jean is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of the CFA Institute and CFA Society Houston. Jean has his M.B.A., from Essec, France and he attended Lycée Louis le Grand in Paris.
David Rice Lummis
David Rice Lummis is a co-founder of Houston Trust Company. He currently serves as President and CEO, chairman of the Trust Committee, and the Company’s chief investment officer. For seven years prior to the formation of the Houston Trust Company, he oversaw stock and bond portfolios, operating businesses, real estate, litigation support and estate planning for a large Houston family office. He was also involved for several years as a Representative in concluding the Howard Hughes, Jr. administration. His investment management and capital markets experience includes four years as an investment banker in corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions with Lazard Frères & Co. in New York. A native Houstonian, David holds a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and Master of Business Administration and Masters of Accountancy degrees from Rice University.
Mari Carmen Ramínez
Mari Carmen Ramírez is the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A globally renowned authority on modern and contemporary Latin American art, Ramírez has published extensively and curated numerous award-winning exhibitions, including Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (with Héctor Olea). She’s also conceptualized and implemented the ICAA Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art Project, a major digital archive and book series focused on primary sources. Since her arrival at the museum in 2001, Ms. Ramírez has led a long-term transformation in the appreciation and understanding of Latin American and Latino visual arts in the United States and abroad through acquisitions, research, exhibitions, publications, and a free online digital archive. In 2005 Ramírez received the Award for Curatorial Excellence granted by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. That same year, TIME magazine named her one of “The 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America.”
Gwen Strauss
Since the founding of the Dora Maar House residency program in 2007, Gwen Strauss has been the primary person working on-site, first as the assistant director and then as the director. Before coming to work at the Dora Maar House, Strauss was the director of the Savannah College of Art and Design’s campus in Lacoste. She is also a working writer. Her books include: The Hiding Game, a Middle Grade Reader about artists hiding in Marseille with the help of Varian Fry in 1940; Trail of Stones, a book of poetry; The Night Shimmy, a children’s book; and Ruth and the Green Book, which received wide recognition including the ALA 2011 Most Notable Middle Grade Reader and Honor book for the Jane Adam’s Peace Prize. Her most recent work is The Nine, (May 2021) follows the true story of Strauss’ great aunt, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris.
Board of Directors Nancy B Negley Association (FRANCE)
Yves Rousset-Rouard
Mayor of Ménerbes from 1995 to 2014, Yves Rousset-Rouard is a noted film producer, wine maker, businessman, and politician. His many films include Emmanuelle, which was an international success and was shown for thirteen years in theaters in Paris; Les Bronzés, a cult series classic; Je vais craquer; I love you, je t’aime; Le Père Noël est une ordure; and Le souper. In 1983 he bought the “France III”, the racing sailboat that competed in the 25th America’s Cup. In 1989 he founded the winery La Citadelle, in the vineyards below Ménerbes where he also built the corkscrew museum to house his impressive collection. Most recently, he has created a botanical garden next to the winery. Since 1996, he was the administrator, then secretary general for the Fondation Franco-Japanese Sasakawa. He also created the Fondation pour Ménerbes. In 1993, he was elected deputy for the Vaucluse and two years later he was elected mayor of Ménerbes for the first of three terms. As mayor he spearheaded many projects of restoration and cultural development that greatly benefited the village. He was responsible for the concept and restoration project of the Maison de la Truffe et du Vin du Luberon, a 17th century house transformed into a wine and truffle center. Through his leadership, Ménerbes is renown as a central truffle village, hosting the annual truffle market in December each year. He has been awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur et de l’ordre national Mérite, Officier des Arts et des Lettres, Chevalier du Mérite Agricole, Etoiles d’or et d’argent de l’ordre du Trésor Sacré (in Japan).
Celeste Schenck
Celeste Schenck, the twelfth president of The American University of Paris, was formerly its Provost and Dean, as well as a Professor of Comparative Literature. She received her BA from Princeton University and her PhD from Brown University, edited two international series, Reading Women Writing and the Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and published widely on women’s autobiography and poetry, critical theory, international development, and educational and pedagogical issues. A leader in global higher education, Dr. Schenck founded AMICAL in 2004, a consortium of American universities across Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa, holding in common the mission of sharing resources, technologies, curricular projects and faculty and student exchanges across 29 institutions, 21 countries, and 19 languages. She has also served as president of AAICU (Association of American International Colleges and Universities), a presidents’ organization spanning American-style universities across the world. The President of The American University of Paris since 2008, she currently writes and speaks on issues of international higher education, the global liberal arts, and women’s leadership.
Joseph Havel
Joseph Havel is a world-renowned artist who lives and works in Houston, Texas. In addition to his studio practice, Havel is Director of the Glassell School of Art and its acclaimed Core Residency Program. He has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe including solo museum exhibitions at The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead U.K., The Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, The Center for Contemporary Art, Kiev, and The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard, New York. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including the 2000 Whitney Biennial. His work is in public collections in the U.S. and abroad including The Whitney Museum, New York, The Modern Museum of Fort Worth, The Pompidou Center, Paris, The National Gallery, Washington, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium, The Ministry of Culture, Paris, The Menil Collection, Houston, The Dallas Museum of Art, Rice University, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has received a National Endowment of The Arts Fellowship in 1987, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship in 1995, Artadia Award in 2005. He was the 2013 Texas Visual Artist as recognized by the Texas Legislature and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
Françoise Nyssen
Françoise Nyssen is a French-Belgian publisher and politician and a former director of the Actes Sud publishing house. From 2017 until 2018, she served as Minister of Culture of France in the government of Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. Early in her career, Nyssen worked first as an urban planner in Paris. In 1987, Nyssen became an associate and presiding director of Actes Sud publishing, located in Arles. Françoise Nyssen and her husband founded the Steiner-Waldorf school Domaine du possible in 2014. The school settled in a farm a few kilometers away from the center of Arles. She is a committed feminist and received the Prix Veuve Clicquot award for women in business in 1991. She is also an Officier de la Légion d’honneur, Commandeur de l’ordre national du Mérite, and Commandeur de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Malika Noui
Malika Noui has been project manager at the Centre Pompidou since 2004. From 1993 to 2003, she oversaw the photo library of the Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle du Centre Pompidou. She previously created the catalogue raisonné for Albert Gleizes as part of her doctoral studies at the Sorbonne, Paris. She obtained a master’s degree in art history from the University of Montpellier and a DEA in art history from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She is the secretary of the Geneviève Asse Endowment Fund and in charge of the Geneviève Asse studio in Paris. She has a house in Ménerbes.
Jérôme de Staël
Jérôme de Staël moved to Ménerbes as a very young child when his father Nicolas de Staël bought the “Castellet” in the village with the encouragement of his friend Dora Maar. As a young adult Jérôme traveled to South America and discovered photography. He later became a cabinetmaker and eventually he returned to Ménerbes. He created “Rencontres des Toiles” a week-long non-profit festival of art, music, and film in the village.
Walter Negley
Walter Negley is president WN Global, which is a holding company for two heavy industrial product manufacturing concerns based in Houston, Texas. Other business affiliations include past board member of Highland Resources, a family-owned real estate company founded by Herman and George R. Brown, and the A. S. Gage Ranch, founded by family members in Brewster and Presidio Counties in West Texas in 1883. Walter has served as a board trustee for the Kinkaid School, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the Neuhaus Center, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Walter graduated from Trinity University in 1977 with a B.A. in Economics and attended the MBA program at the University of Texas at Austin. Walter grew up in San Antonio and now resides in Houston with his wife, Suzette, and three daughters.
