BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Anne Pasternak will take over the reins at the Brooklyn Museum as its Shelby White and Leon Levy director. Pasternak will join the museum after more than 20 years as president and artistic director of Creative Time, a nonprofit arts organization that has commissioned and presented major public art projects with hundreds of artists throughout New York City, across the United States and internationally. Pasternak will succeed Arnold L. Lehman, who will retire after 17 years as the Brooklyn Museum’s director, and will assume the directorship of the board of trustees on September 1.

“Anne Pasternak is a fantastic leader who will expand upon the extraordinary growth the Brooklyn Museum has achieved during Arnold Lehman’s tenure. Pairing Anne’s talents with the depth and breadth of the Brooklyn Museum’s permanent collection will bring the museum to new heights,” said Elizabeth A. Sackler, board chair and founder of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

Departing director Arnold L. Lehman said, “Anne is one of the most dynamic and creative forces in the art world today. I expect that once her extraordinary experience and energies are connected to the exciting, inclusive brand and treasures of the Brooklyn Museum, the blend will be ‘dynamite!’ I’ve known Anne for 30 years, and she is the right person to lead the museum into the future.”

While at Creative Time, Pasternak led the organization in commissioning, funding and presenting hundreds of artist projects and installations throughout New York City and around the world. She led the creation and presentation of art initiatives that are inclusive, publicly accessible and free of charge, from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Far Rockaway and Harlem, to the North Shore of Staten Island and beyond.

Important projects include “Tribute in Light,” the twin beacons of light that illuminated the sky above the former World Trade Center site after 9/11 and beyond; Paul Chan’s “Waiting for Godot” in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward; Nick Cave’s “Heard NY” in Grand Central Terminal; Doug Aitken’s “Sleepwalkers” at The Museum of Modern Art; Jenny Holzer’s “For New York at Rockefeller Center”; Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety” in the former Domino Sugar warehouse, Williamsburg; and the recent joint project “Funk, God, Jazz & Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn” at the Weeksville Heritage Center and its surrounding neighborhood in Brooklyn.

She also launched the Creative Time Summit, the largest art and social-justice conference in the world, and Creative Time Reports, which puts artists’ opinions, editorials and articles into mainstream news media.

Born in West Hartford, Conn., in 1964, Pasternak, holds a bachelor of arts degree in arts administration from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and was a master of arts candidate at Hunter College, from which she received an honorary doctor of fine arts degree in 2013.

In addition to her work with Creative Time, she has a long history of curating independent exhibitions, consulting on urban planning initiatives and contributing essays to cultural publications. She has served on scores of juries for organizations including The Kresge Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Education, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and The Pew Charitable Trusts. She was a visiting scholar at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and the Yale University School of Art.

Pasternak is married to the artist Mike Starn, and they have a college-age daughter.

The Brooklyn Museum is at 200 Eastern Parkway. For information, 718-638-5000 or www.brooklynmuseum.org.