Bonnie Burnham

Bonnie Burnham is an American art historian who headed World Monuments Fund (WMF), an international historic preservation organization founded in 1965 and based in New York City. She joined the organization as executive director in 1985, and was named president in 1996. She retired in 2015.

Born in Florida, Burnham received degrees from the University of Florida and the Sorbonne.

Burnham worked in Paris at the International Council of Museums, for which she compiled and edited The Protection of Cultural Property, Handbook of National Legislation, published in 1974.

In 1975, Burnham became executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) in New York. That c year, her next book, The Art Crisis, was published. While at IFAR, Burnham developed the organization’s Art Theft Archive program and published Art Theft; Its Scope, Its Impact and Its Control (1978).

In 1985, she became executive director of the International Fund for Monuments, taking over from the organization’s retiring founder, Colonel James A. Gray. Shortly after her arrival, the organization was renamed World Monuments Fund. She oversaw the global extension of the organization’s work. In the 1980s and early 1990s, World Monuments Fund established national affiliate organizations in Western Europe, and began programs addressing the needs of countries in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Iron Curtain (which also led to the creation of the organization’s Jewish Heritage Program), Cambodia following downfall of the Khmer Rouge, the former Yugoslavia following the Balkans war, and Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion. In 1996, Burnham led the establishment of the World Monuments Watch, a global advocacy effort of the World Monuments Fund, that calls attention to heritage emergencies and opportunities.

Burnham’s honors include Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government (1989); Distinguished Alumna of the College of Fine Arts of the University of Florida (1995); the first recipient of the University of Florida’s Beinecke-Reeves Distinguished Achievement Award in Historic Preservation (2004); and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Florida Southern College (2009). She has served on the boards of the National Institute of Conservation and the Hearst Castle Preservation Foundation and as a member of the United States Commission for UNESCO. She is currently on the board of the New York Studio School; Fellow of the U. S. Committee, International Council on Monuments and Sites; and a member of the Board of Advocates, College of Design, Construction and Planning, University of Florida. She also serves on the International Council of the Preservation Society of Newport, RI, and the National Advisory Committee of The Olana Partnership.

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