Associate Provost Philip S. Khoury announced that Lori Gross, director of the Museum Loan Network at MIT since 1995, will become director of arts initiatives and advisor to the associate provost, effective July 1, 2007.
Gross will work with Khoury to advance the arts at MIT, specifically in the areas of strategic planning, communications policy, resource development and facilities planning. Working alongside the associate provost and with the Creative Arts Council members, faculty, staff and students, Gross will create and implement strategic plans to further the arts' agenda, manage non-curricular arts initiatives across disciplines and facilitate ongoing dialogue concerning the role of the arts at the Institute.
"Lori Gross has long been active in the arts community at MIT and she brings a wealth of professional experience to her new position," said Khoury. "I am excited about working closely with Lori to further the interests of the arts, which are already such a vital contributor to the world of creativity at the Institute."
Gross has served as the founding director of the Museum Loan Network (MLN) since its establishment in 1995, encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations among U.S. institutions and enabling them to better serve their communities. As an international lecturer, she promoted multifaceted partnerships among institutions and an appreciation and understanding of the value of collections-based community-focused programming.
Under her leadership, the MLN has awarded nearly 400 grants to U.S. museums, established an illustrated online database of more than 20,000 objects from more than 1,000 global cultures and facilitated cultural policy dialogue on the role of museums.
During her tenure at the MLN, Gross has been an active participant in the MIT community. She has served on a number of search committees for the MIT Museum and the List Visual Arts Center and has been a member of the Creative Arts Council for 12 years. An energetic member of the wider Cambridge community, Gross is interim co-chair of the citywide Cambridge Arts Advisory Council for the public schools and a board member of the Underground Railway Theater.
In her more than 30 years working in the arts and museum fields in the United States, Canada and Spain, Gross has developed extensive experience in directing complex arts initiatives and in building partnerships among various constituencies. A Getty Museum Management Institute alumna, she holds master's degrees in art history and library science from Case Western Reserve University and a bachelor's degree in art history from Colgate University.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 16, 2007 (download PDF).
