William Henry Luers is a retired American career diplomat and museum executive. He is the director of the Iran Project. In addition to a thirty-one-year career in the Foreign Service, Luers has served as a U.S. Navy officer, as president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and as president of the United Nations Association of the United States of America. Luers is an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

The Praemium Imperiale is an international art prize inaugurated in 1988 and awarded since 1989 by the Imperial family of Japan on behalf of the Japan Art Association in the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and theatre/film.