Dear Friends, 

Nine years go by quickly! Clearly, we were having fun. 

It has been an incredible honor to have led Tufts University Art Galleries (known fondly as TUAG) for close to a decade. When I joined, Tufts and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) had just merged, creating a new two-campus structure for the art galleries, joining two storied organizations in Boston and Medford. Working with a small but mighty team of curators and staff who wear many hats, we built (and still are building) an exhibition program that brings contemporary artists, projects, and discourse to the Greater Boston and campus communities in inventive and accessible ways. Always free and open to all, TUAG is a space where research, artistic practice, and community converge. 

Exhibitions such as Véxoa: Nós sabemos, realized in collaboration with Tufts Visual Material Studies faculty Claudia Mattos Avolese and supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art; a focus on mounting thoughtful solo exhibitions from women artists, including Tomashi Jackson, Beverly Semmes, and Michelle Lopez, supported by the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and the two-year research initiative How do you throw a brick through the window…, co-organized in partnership with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and supported by the Teiger Foundation, demonstrate the diversity of exhibition programming TUAG incubates in dialogue with faculty, staff, and students at Tufts.  

During my time here, our work has spread well beyond our two gallery spaces (because two locations are not enough!). We expanded our public art program, developing a campus-wide committee that sets standards and practices to ensure equitable, transparent, and community-driven commissioning processes. The collection has grown not just in size but in intentionality, with a strategic focus on ensuring a diversity of artists and voices through our donor-driven group, Tufts Acquisitions Committee (TAC). Well beyond the campus borders, TUAG has given back to the Greater Boston community with Collective Futures Fund, our Warhol Foundation Regional Regranting partnership, about which we are excited to share more important news in the coming months. 

Over the past nine years, we have produced:

• 71 exhibitions

• 97 public programs 

• 602 artwork acquisitions 

• $XXX in direct grants to artists

And while I do love a good data set, numbers can never tell the full story of the relationships, conversations, and moments of genuine connection that make this work meaningful. I leave this role deeply grateful—to the artists who trusted us with their work, to our community partners, to the dedicated TUAG team, and to all of you who walked through our doors, attended a program, or simply believed in what we were building together. I can’t wait to see what comes next as colleagues Laurel V. McLaughlin and Laura McDonald step into Interim co-Director roles for upcoming exhibitions celebrating the 150th anniversary of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and a survey of work by Tufts alumnus Arnold J. Kemp (BA/BFA ’91). As I depart for Wellesley’s Davis Museum as the new Ruth Gordon Shapiro ’37 Director … [continued]