Dr. Eric L. Motley

Eric L. Motley, Ph.D., is the Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He previously served as an Executive Vice President and Corporate Secretary at the Aspen Institute, responsible for Institutional Advancement and governance. During his tenure at the Aspen Institute, he also served as Vice President and Managing Director of the Henry Crown Fellowship Program. In addition, he served as the Executive Director of the Aspen Institute-Rockefeller Foundation’s Commission to Reform the Federal Appointments Process, an independent, nonpartisan effort to evaluate the Federal government’s vetting and clearance procedures.

Prior to joining the Aspen Institute, he served as the Director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Visitors within the Bureau of Public Diplomacy. In 2003, he became Special Assistant to President George W. Bush for Presidential Personnel, where he managed the appointment process in the White House for over 1,200 presidentially-appointed advisory board and commission positions.

Eric serves on the Board of Trustees of the Morgan Library and Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress; Washington National Cathedral; WETA/public broadcasting station in the nation’s capital; the Bishop Walker School for Boys; and the Advisory Board of Planet Word Museum. He is a member of the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C. and the Grolier Club of New York City.

Eric is a Paul Harris Fellow of the Rotary International Foundation and Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. He is an avid book collector of first editions and rare books. In February 2017, he published a memoir Madison Park, A Place of Hope telling the story of the small community in Montgomery, AL, where he grew up, that was founded in 1880 by a group of freed slaves.

Eric serves as co-chair of a Cathedral working group tasked with envisioning the future of the former Lee-Jackson stained glass windows, which were removed from the Cathedral in 2018.

Eric earned his bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Philosophy from Samford University. As a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, he earned a Master of Letters in International Relations and a Ph.D. as the John Steven Watson Scholar.