Who

The former head of the flagship Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue, Dennison is now an executive at the auction house Sotheby's.

Backstory

Dennison grew up comfortably in West Orange, New Jersey: Her father, Saul Dennison, made a fortune manufacturing auto parts. (Lisa later persuaded him to take up art-collecting and he's now president of the board of the New Museum.) After attending college at Wellesley and interning at the Guggenheim under then-director Thomas Messer one summer, Lisa returned to Brown to earn an M.A. in art history. In 1978 she returned full-time to the Guggenheim, where she quickly navigated her way up the curatorial ladder: In 1985, she earned her first chance to oversee a show, putting together works by nine fledgling American artists; by the 1990s, she was working on some of the Guggenheim's biggest exhibitions and advising art-collecting moguls like Steve Wynn on their multi-million acquisitions. In 2005, with director Thomas Krens' leadership facing increasing criticism, board chairman William Mack stripped him of day-to-day control of the flagship museum and placed Dennison in charge. As director, she spent two years deciding what pieces were to be displayed in the famous Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda (along with chief curator Nancy Spector) and headed up fund-raising efforts, securing large donations from the likes of hedge fund mogul Dave Ganek, Peter Brant, and LA billionaire Eli Broad.

Recently

Dennison has established a rep as both a shrewd curator and an effective money-raiser, and over the years a number of other museums (such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) made valiant attempts to lure her away. She resisted all overtures until 2007, when Sotheby's contemporary art chief Tobias Meyer successfully persuaded her to give up the Guggenheim—and the world of nonprofit—for a much more lucrative position at the tony auction house. Dennison now works in Sotheby's "business development" group where her job seems to consist of coaxing tycoons to sell their art through Sotheby's or pay the auction house steep fees to advise them on purchases.

Personal

Dennison and her second husband, Roderick Waywell, live on the Upper East Side with their sons Brad and Tyler, in a pair of apartments they combined.