“We are honored to join our esteemed colleagues at LACMA and ASU,” said Franklin Sirmans, director of PAMM. “Having seen this program come into existence while working at LACMA and then watching the first cohort rise in the ranks of their institutions, we are delighted to be a part of this important scholarly endeavor, and for Pérez Art Museum Miami to be represented by our first fellow, Emily Valdes.””
“To remain a relevant and vital public resource, museums must do better at representing the diverse communities they serve,” said David Roche, Heard Museum CEO. “Not only through exhibitions and programs, but also by the staff who are making creative and financial decisions for these institutions. There is a particular dearth of Indigenous representation in the museum field, and the Heard Museum believes that it must work to expand opportunities not just for Indigenous artists, but for museum administrators as well.”
In the summer of 2021, ASU and LACMA celebrated the graduation of the first LACMA-ASU Master’s Fellows.
“Our graduates are already building off their academic training to curate exhibitions, further their research and inform their museum work,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, at the time. “Our collaboration with ASU has been deep and fruitful, and we are thrilled to expand our joint commitment to advance the careers of a new generation of museum leaders by partnering with additional institutions around the country.”
The inaugural cohort of fellows included Dhyandra Lawson, assistant curator in LACMA’s Wallis Annenberg Photography Department; Celia Yang, major gift officer and head of director’s strategic initiatives, Asia at LACMA; Matthew Villar Miranda, ASU Art Museum’s Curatorial Fellow, now a visual arts curatorial fellow at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and Ariana Enriquez, assistant registrar at the ASU Art Museum. Both Lawson and Yang were recently promoted, reflecting the scholarship and skill sets that each has been able to bring to their work through their engagement with the fellowship program. Enriquez said in a recent interview with ARTnews that the fellowship program helped her become aware of “the ways that I can make transformative change within my department.” (Read the full ARTnews story about the ASU-LACMA fellowship program.)
“We’re grateful for the many contributions the fellows make in our classes and scholarly lives,” said Angélica Afanador-Pujol, who served as program director for the ASU-LACMA Master’s Fellowship through spring of 2022. “We are proud to continue to support them in their museum careers, and we welcome the addition of PAMM to the program.”
