Olga Viso
Viso speaking at the Walker Art Center
Born
Florida, U.S
EducationRollins College, Emory University
Occupation(s)Museum director, curator
Organization(s)Senior Advisor, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Executive Director, Walker Art Center, Director, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Board member ofAndy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Olga Viso (born 1966) is a Cuban American curator of modern and contemporary art and a museum director based at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts in Tempe, Arizona.[1] She served as executive director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota from 2007 through 2017, and was curator of contemporary art and director of the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC from 1995-2007.

Career

In 2018, Viso joined the leadership team at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where she is a senior advisor, building global arts partnerships, among them with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art[2] and James Turrell's Roden Crater Project.[3] Before coming to ASU, Viso was executive director of the Walker for ten years. There she oversaw a significant facilities expansion that integrated the Walker's main campus with the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, added a new entrance,[4] and sixteen new outdoor sculptures, including commissions with artists Nairy Baghramian, Katharina Fritsch, Theaster Gates, and Mark Manders.[5]

Viso joined the Walker Art Center in 2008, leaving her post as Director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden which she held since 2005.[6] She joined the Hirshhorn in 1995, working her way up from assistant curator.[7] Before that, Viso curated at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida (1993–95) and at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia (1989–93). She has served on the board of directors of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and belongs to the Association of Art Museum Directors. In 2013, President Barack Obama appointed Viso to the National Council on the Arts.[8]

Viso has curated many major exhibitions, including Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972-1985, a retrospective of about 100 works shown at the Hirshhorn and the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2004.[9] Another exhibition Viso curated was Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take. This show traveled from the Dallas Museum of Art (October 6, 2013 – January 12, 2014) to the Walker Art Center (February 15–May 11, 2014) then on to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (June 5–September 1, 2014) and ended at UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (October 5, 2014 – January 17, 2015).[10]

Viso resigned from her position as executive director of the Walker Art Center in 2017, and there was some speculation that her departure was related to the controversy surrounding Sam Durant's artwork Scaffold, though many museum professionals have publicly expressed support for Viso's handling of the work's reception.[11] The artist, Sam Durant, took primary accountability and transferred the rights of the work to the Dakota and agreed they would dismantle and ceremoniously burn the work. In 2021, plans to erect a monument on the site of the massacre were approved, a work by a Dakota artist, Angela Two Stars, in which visitors may sit and pay their respects.[12] Viso reflected on the controversy in an opinion piece for the New York Times in 2018, "Decolonizing the Art Museum: The Second Wave," where she acknowledged the colonizing forces at play in museums and the broader art world and urged museum leaders to "stop seeing activists as antagonists."[13]

References

  1. ↑ Eler, Alicia. "Former Walker director Olga Viso lands senior advisor position at ASU's Herberger Institute". Star Tribune. Retrieved 2022-01-30.
  2. ↑ "Renowned curator and Latin-American scholar Olga Viso joins Herberger Institute team". ASU News. 2018-09-07. Retrieved 2022-01-30.
  3. ↑ Battaglia, Andy (2019-06-18). "Higher Education: Arizona State University's Partnership With James Turrell's Roden Crater Has Much to Teach Museums". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2022-01-30.
  4. ↑ Fisher, Thomas. "Streetscapes: Why the new entrance at the Walker Art Center matters". Star Tribune. Retrieved 2022-01-30.
  5. ↑ Abbe, Mary (January 26, 2022). "Minneapolis Sculpture Garden to grow with 16 works from Walker Art Center". Star Tribune. Retrieved 2022-01-30.
  6. ↑ "Olga Viso Appointed Director of the Walker Art Center". Artforum. October 2015. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  7. ↑ Abbe, Mary (2007-09-11). "Walker Art Center hires 'rising star' to take helm". Star Tribune. Avista Capital Partners. Archived from the original on 2007-12-17. Retrieved 2009-06-02.
  8. ↑ "National Endowment for the Arts Announces Three New Members of the National Council on the Arts". National Endowment for the Arts. 21 November 2013. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  9. ↑ Camhi, Leslie (20 June 2004). "Art; Her Body, Herself". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  10. ↑ Knight, Christopher (13 October 2014). "Loss permeates Jim Hodges' art; prepare for heartbreak". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  11. ↑ Russeth, Andy Battaglia, Sarah Douglas, and Andrew (2017-11-17). "After Announcement That Olga Viso Will Step Down as Walker Director, Museum Professionals Largely Praise Handling of 'Scaffold' Controversy". ARTnews. Retrieved 2018-04-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. ↑ Espeland, Pamela (June 29, 2021). "New work by Native artist to rise where 'Scaffold' stood". MinnPost. Retrieved 2021-12-26.
  13. ↑ Viso, Olga (2018-05-01). "Opinion | Decolonizing the Art Museum: The Next Wave". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-01-30.
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