Talks: Amada Cruz

Join Locust Projects and Oolite Arts for a conversation with Director and CEO of Seattle Art Museum Amada Cruz.

About the Speaker:
Amada Cruz was named the Illsey Ball Nordstrom Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Seattle Art Museum in September 2019. Born in Havana, Cuba, Cruz studied Art History and Political Science at New York University. Her first museum position was as a curatorial intern at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where she subsequently worked as a Curatorial Assistant. Cruz served as The Sybil Harrington Director and Chief Executive Officer of Phoenix Art Museum from February 2015 to July 2019. Her other museum positions have included posts as Assistant Director and Acting Director at the Lannan Museum in Lake Worth Florida; Associate Curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution; Acting Chief Curator and Manilow Curator of Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies Museum at Bard College; and as the former Executive Director at San Antonio-based Artpace, an artist residency program. Cruz has also worked as a grantmaker and was the founding Program Director for United States Artists in Los Angeles, where she was responsible for all programming activities of a Ford and Rockefeller Foundations initiative. She also has been Executive Director of Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue in New York City, which awarded grants to visual artists in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago.