David M. Hillenbrand of Savannah, Ga., a retired Bayer executive, has been chosen as the next president of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

David Hillenbrand

Members of the search and executive committees, as well as the four museum directors, will meet Hillenbrand, 57, at a dinner Monday at the museum in Oakland. A news conference is scheduled for Tuesday.

Hillenbrand will succeed Ellsworth Brown, who resigned after an 11-year tenure in April 2004.

Reached last night at his home, Hillenbrand would not confirm that he was the choice of the eight-member search committee, which was led by Lee Foster of Fox Chapel.

Neither Foster, nor Suzy Broadhurst, interim president of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, could be reached for comment last night.

Hillenbrand, whose peripatetic business career took him to Germany, Canada, Indiana and, for eight years, Pittsburgh. He retired from Bayer AG in August 2003. At the time, he had been executive vice president of Bayer Polymers since July 2002.

He spent his formative years absorbing the art, languages and cultures of European cities. His late father, Martin J. Hillenbrand, spent more than 30 years as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, serving as ambassador to Hungary and Germany.

"I am, first and foremost, the product of an extremely interesting cultural education. My parents were also very involved with the arts. When we were in Bonn and Budapest, they were very involved with arts programs in the U.S. embassies to put works of art of major contemporary artists into the embassy residence," he said."I grew up with a lot of good and interesting and challenging art around me."

He lived in Germany and Paris in the 1950s and Budapest in the late 1960s.

Hillenbrand spent his last two years of high school meeting students from all over the world at Atlantic College, a British public school founded by the German educator Kurt Hahn, who established similar schools based on an international philosophy.

The school, Hillenbrand recalled, "was in a wonderful castle that William Randolph Hearst had purchased for his mistress, Marion Davies. He put in all the modern conveniences."

Hillenbrand lives in the historic district of Savannah. He returned there partly because his mother's family was originally from the city. He and his wife vacationed there when their two sons were young.

Sande Deitch of Santa Fe, N.M., former executive director of the Bayer Foundation, described Hillenbrand as a charismatic, upstanding man.

Deitch, who became director of the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in 1987, said Hillenbrand was one of her strongest supporters.

"He was an incredible board member and was very interested in the center and was very, very helpful."

As a board member, Deitch said, "he was very interested and knowledgeable about art. He was a serious guy with a good sense of humor. He was someone that everyone respected. I think he would be a wonderful person in that position because he's got lots of class. I'm sure he will be a very good fund-raiser."

Born in Bremen, Germany, in 1947, Hillenbrand earned a bachelor of arts degree from Duke University in Durham, N.C., and a master of arts and philosophy as well as a doctorate in Germanics from the University of Washington in Seattle. Germanics is the study of Germanic languages and literature.

In 1976, Hillenbrand joined Bayer at the company's headquarters in Leverkusen, Germany, just outside Cologne.

He spent eight years in Pittsburgh working with Dr. Konrad Weis, a retired Bayer president who lives in Squirrel Hill and remains on the board of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. At the time, the company was known as Mobay.

From 1994 through 2002, Hillenbrand lived in Toronto, Ontario, and served as president and chief executive officer of Bayer's Canadian operations.

From 1991 to 1994, he served as senior vice president and general site manager of Miles Inc. He was responsible for administration services and operations at Bayer's largest North American site, in Elkhart, Ind.