Joan Goodnick Westenholz (1 July 1943 – February 2013) was an Assyriologist and the chief curator at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem.

She completed her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago in 1971 and studied under Erica Reiner, A. Leo Oppenheim, I. J. Gelb, and Miguel Civil.

[3] In 1988, Westenholz was named the chief curator of the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem and she remained for two decades.

[4] One obituary praised her work: "A prolific scholar, Dr. Goodnick Westenholz published extensively on religion, literary traditions and gender issues in the ancient Near East.

She was an authoritative voice on a wide range of subjects, from the epic literature of the Sargonic kings of Akkad to temple structures in Mesopotamia, and from gendered divinities and rituals to the Assyrian lexicon.