Leadership

Alexandra Munroe, Chair, Board of Trustees

Alexandra Munroe is an award-winning curator, Asia scholar and author focusing on art, culture and institutional global strategy. She is a pioneering authority on modern and contemporary art from Asia and a leading scholar of world art history. Over the course of her distinguished institutional career, she has impacted the strategic development of government, foundation and corporate partnerships across Asia and the Middle East while earning renown for her advocacy of expanded perspectives on the art of our time. 

Raised in Japan and the U.S., Munroe received a BA from Sophia University, Tokyo; an MA in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and a Ph.D. in East Asian History from New York University. She worked as an independent curator based in New York and Tokyo before, in 1998, becoming director of Japan Society Gallery, and later, Vice President of Arts and Culture at Japan Society, the leading organization dedicated to cultural and policy exchange between Japan and the United States. She led the society’s expansion of contemporary arts programming through such exhibitions as YES Yoko Ono (2000) and Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subcultures (2005) curated by Takashi Murakami. Both critically-acclaimed exhibitions set record attendance for the organization. 

In 2006, Munroe was appointed Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York – the first curatorial post of its kind in an international art museum. Under her leadership, the Guggenheim has presented groundbreaking exhibitions and scholarly publications on Asian art in a global context and has expanded its mission across the Guggenheim’s constellation to study, acquire and exhibit art from beyond the Western world. In 2013, the Guggenheim launched The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative under Munroe’s direction with a $10 million grant to advance the study, exhibition and acquisition of contemporary art from China in a global context. A founding curator of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project since 2007, she served as Senior Curator and Director, Curatorial Affairs, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi from 2018-2023, where she led the foundational curatorial program, collection growth, and research initiatives shaping the future museum. 

Munroe is internationally recognized as one of the most influential scholar-curators of her generation.  Her survey exhibition Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (1994-95) initiated the academic and curatorial field of postwar Japanese art history in North America. Her work has established the international study and mainstream appreciation of several Asian-born artists through such exhibitions as: Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective (1989); YES Yoko Ono (2000); Cai Guo Qiang: I Want to Believe (2008); Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity (2011) and Gutai: Splendid Playground (2013). The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 (2009), which explored Asian influence on American culture, received the inaugural Chairman’s Special Award of $1,000,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Her recent project Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World (2017-19), attracted more than one million visitors over its three-city tour and was selected Top Ten Exhibitions of 2017 by The New York Times and among the Top 25 “most influential shows of the decade” by ArtNews. 

Her 2024 exhibition, Yu Hong: Another One Bites the Dust, is on view concurrently with the 60th Venice Biennale. It features a soundscape by Nico Muhly commissioned by Works & Process and was selected among the “Top 8 Hits” of the Biennale by The New York Times. 

Munroe is a trustee of the Aspen Music Festival and School and an officer of the American Academy in Rome. Her past and current board service includes the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Longhouse Reserve; PEN America; and the US-Japan Foundation. As Vice President of The Rosenkranz Foundation, her philanthropy supports palliative care curriculum development at Mass General Hospital and Yale University Hospital. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a former member of the Association of American Museum Directors (AAMD).  

Munroe received the 2017 Japan Foundation Award and the 2018 Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award, both bestowed by the government of Japan; and is the 2024 recipient of the Japan Society Award, America’s most prestigious recognition of service in the Japan-US space. 

Munroe is married to financier Robert Rosenkranz whose philanthropic initiatives include civil discourse, time-based media, and scientific research to extend human health spans. They are based in New York City and London and have been residents of Red Mountain since 2012. Robert Rosenkranz is a member of Aspen Strategy Group and his Open to Debate Foundation, co-founded with Munroe, produces a podcast and a weekly NPR program that engages some 6 million listeners annually. The organization has presented numerous live debates in conjunction with Aspen Ideas Festival. The exhibition Mountain Time at the Aspen Art Museum in 2022 was drawn primarily from the Rosenkranz collection of time-based media art. Their Aspen residence has an “art barn” which frequently welcomes visiting artists and musicians and stages events for Aspen institutions including AMFS. 

For more information see www.alexandramunroe.com.

Robert Spano, Music Director

Robert Spano, conductor, pianist, composer, and teacher, is known worldwide for the intensity of his artistry and distinctive communicative abilities, creating a sense of inclusion and warmth among musicians and audiences that is unique among American orchestras. After twenty seasons as music director, he will continue his association with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as music director laureate. An avid mentor to rising artists, he is responsible for nurturing the careers of numerous celebrated composers, conductors, and performers. As music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School since 2011, he oversees the programming of more than 300 events and educational programs for 630 students and young performers. Principal guest conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra since 2019, Spano became music director designate on April 1, 2021, and began an initial three-year term as music director in August 2022. He is the tenth music director in the orchestra’s history, which was founded in 1912.

In the 2022–23 season, Spano led the Fort Worth Symphony in six symphonic programs, three chamber music programs, and a gala concert with Yo-Yo Ma, in addition to overseeing the orchestra and music staff and shaping the artistic direction of the orchestra and driving its continued growth. Additional engagements included a return to Houston Grand Opera to conduct Werther.

Maestro Spano made his highly-acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut in 2019, leading the US premiere of Marnie, the second opera by American composer Nico Muhly. Recent concert highlights have included several world premiere performances, including Voy a Dormir by Bryce Dessner at Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor; George Tsontakis’s Violin Concerto No. 3 with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Dimitrios Skyllas’s Kyrie eleison with the BBC Symphony Orchestra; the Tuba Concerto by Jennifer Higdon, performed by Craig Knox and the Pittsburgh Symphony; Melodia, For Piano and Orchestra, by Canadian composer Matthew Ricketts at the Aspen Music Festival; and Miserere, by ASO bassist Michael Kurth.

Spano recently returned to his early love of composing. His newest work is a song cycle on Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus that he wrote for mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor. In 2016, he premiered his Sonata: Four Elements for piano at the Aspen Music Festival, and a song cycle, Hölderlin-Lieder, for soprano Jessica Rivera.

The Atlanta School of Composers reflects Spano’s commitment to American contemporary music. He has led ASO performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Ravinia, Ojai, and Savannah music festivals. Guest engagements have included the Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Minnesota Orchestras, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, and the San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New World, San Diego, Oregon, Utah, and Kansas City symphonies. Internationally, Maestro Spano has led the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, BBC Symphony, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira, Orquestra Sinfonica Estado Sao Paulo, Wrocław Philharmonic, Australia’s Melbourne and Sydney symphonies, and the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Japan. His opera performances include Covent Garden, Welsh National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, and the 2005 and 2009 Seattle Opera productions of Wagner’s Ring cycle.

Alan Fletcher, President and CEO

Alan Fletcher is an accomplished scholar, composer, and arts leader. He serves as president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School.  Alan previously served as professor and head of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University, and as professor, dean, and provost of New England Conservatory.  Born in Riverside, New Jersey, he earned his baccalaureate at Princeton University, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. He earned a master’s degree and doctorate at the Juilliard School as a Danforth graduate fellow, where he received the Irving Berlin Fellowship and the Alexandre Gretchaninoff Prize.  Alan attended the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, and he has been a frequent fellow at the MacDowell Colony. 

Alan’s leadership activities have included chairing the 1997 Salzburg Global Seminar Music for a New Millennium: The Classical Genre in Contemporary Society, which convened 70 distinguished musical leaders from around the world in Mozart’s birthplace. Fletcher lectures nationally and internationally on music and its social importance and has delivered keynote addresses to the National Association of Schools of Music, ClassicalNEXT in Vienna, the Federation for Asian Cultural Promotion, the Shanghai International Arts Festival, and many more. 

Fletcher has contributed articles and opinion pieces to numerous publications including the Huffington Post, The Guardian, Symphony magazine, Gramophone magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Sonus: Journal of Global Music, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Baltimore Sun, the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and others.  

Alan studied composition with Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, and Paul Lansky and piano with Jacob Lateiner and Robert Helps.  He has won numerous composing awards and received commissions from the National Dance Institute, the Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Nashua Symphony, National Gallery of Art, Boston Celebrity Series, Duquesne University, New York Camerata, and other noted ensembles, organizations, and soloists.  Alan’s music includes more than 200 works in all traditional classical forms. His music is recorded on Albany and Exton Records and published by Boosey & Hawkes and Subito. 

Fletcher has served on many boards, panels, juries, seminars, and committees, including the boards of the Aspen Institute, Aspen Science Center, Aspen Chamber Resort Association, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Pittsburgh Opera, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the International Festival for Contemporary Piano, and is an Advisor for Advisory Board for the Arts.