Aaron Betsky is an American critic of art, architecture, and design. He is currently the director of Virginia Tech's School of Architecture + Design. He is internationally known as a lecturer, curator, reviewer, and commentator. He was the director of the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale. He has also been president and Dean of the School of Architecture at Taliesin, director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2001-2006), and of the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006-2014), and was founding Curator of Architecture, Design and Digital Projects at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995-2001). As an unlicensed architect, he worked for Frank O. Gehry & Associates and Hodgetts + Fung. At the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2003, he co-curated "Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio."

​

Betsky has addressed the historically gendered nature of architecture (Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture, and the Construction of Sexuality, 1995), the unique qualities of Dutch design, and consistently advocated for an interpretation of architecture that transcends physical building. Another recurrent theme in his writings is a call to embrace and reimagine the American suburban landscape. He has often called for the renovation and adaptive reuse of old buildings rather than wasteful construction of new ones: "When will we learn that adaptation and reuse is so much better?"