France A. Crdova, president of Purdue University in Indiana, has been appointed a member of the Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents.

Smithsonian Institution announced that effective June 2009 appointed Judith Leonard as general counsel. She will manage the 17-person legal department, coordinate litigation with the Department of Justice and represent the institution in administrative proceedings. She worked in-house at the University of North Carolina before her current job as vice president for legal affairs and general counsel at The University of Arizona.

Smithsonian Institution appointed Johnnetta Cole, an anthropologist and former college president, as the new director of the National Museum of African Art. Cole, 72, made national headlines in 1987 when she became the first African American woman to lead Atlanta's Spelman College, the country's oldest historically black women's university. Most recently, Cole has been the chairman of the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute, which is housed at Bennett.