Announcing the New Museum Director

January 18, 2012

To the Williams Community,

I am delighted to announce that, following a national search, the new Director of the Williams College Museum of Art will be Christina Olsen, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.

Her commitment to and experience with the educational mission of museums make her a great fit for WCMA.

Before moving to Portland, she worked for 11 years at the Getty Museum and Foundation, where among other responsibilities she managed the foundation’s $4 million grants for institutional research and education. The Getty, which until recently was under the leadership of Jim Wood ’63, is a place where the future of museums is being worked out, and Tina participated deeply in that process.

The college will benefit from her energy, openness, and passion both for art objects and for how people interact with them.

A fuller story of her extensive career is told in the news release available here. http://bit.ly/xGPtfX

Tina begins her new position May 1. She’ll then be joined at the end of the school year by her husband Jeff Glab and their daughters Sonia, 10, and Alice, 8.

Our thanks go to Interim Director Katy Kline, who has agreed to continue her thoughtful stewardship of the museum until Tina can be here.

We should also thank the Search Committee, members of which are listed below, for their careful work, which has lead to this wonderful result.

Regards,
Adam Falk
President

WCMA Director Search Committee
George Ahl ’82, Chair of the WCMA Visiting Committee
Laylah Ali ’90, Professor of Art
Magnus Bernhardsson, Professor of History
Will Dudley ’89 (Chair) Provost and Professor of Philosophy
Marc Gotlieb, Professor of Art and Director of the Graduate Program in Art History
Maya Harakawa ’12
Keli Kaegi, Assistant to the President and Secretary of the College
Katy Kline, Interim Director of the Williams College Museum of Art
Peter Low, Chair and Professor of Art
Glenn Lowry ’76, Director of the Museum of Modern Art
Betty Zimmerberg, Chair and Professor of Psychology