Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) has appointed Abaseh Mirvali as its new executive director, chief curator, and CEO effective immediately.
In this role, Mirvali will work closely with the MCASB staff and its board of trustees, as well as the wider Santa Barbara and greater Los Angeles communities to advance the museum’s mission regionally, nationally, and internationally.
In addition to setting the curatorial vision for the institution, Mirvali will launch MCASB’s expansion to a new location in Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone arts district.
Mirvali brings with her more than 15 years of experience working as an internationally respected director and independent contemporary art and architecture curator and project producer.
Her professional background includes previous roles as executive director of the Colección/Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, 2005-08. There, she fortified and developed one of the most distinguished collections of contemporary art held by a private institution in Latin America.
Mirvali also served as CEO/executive director of Denver’s Biennial of the Americas for its 2013 edition, establishing the vision for their exhibitions, public art projects, and urban architectural interventions, as well as its policy programs.
Earlier in her career, she served as senior advisor to the U.S. ambassador for culture and education, creating innovative art and educational programming led by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.
Mirvali has collaborated with renowned cultural institutions, artists and architects worldwide, as well as served on the boards of cultural and educational organizations in cities including:
Bogotá, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Milan, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Turin, Vienna, and Berlin and Mexico City, where she was most recently based.
“Abaseh is a visionary leader and curator whose deep expertise and incredible relationships with artists and institutions around the world will prove invaluable to MCASB,” said Jacquelyn Klein-Brown, board president, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.
“With her international perspective and hands-on approach, the entire board is delighted to have Abaseh’s innovative vision for transformation and growth to shape the future of MCASB,” Klein-Brown said.
“I am tremendously excited to be joining Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara at this incredible moment in the Museum’s trajectory,” Mirvali said.
“I have met an incredibly special group of people with an immense commitment to this museum and their community. It is an honor that, in me, they see the right partner to realize a shared vision for the future of MCASB,” she said.
“I am looking forward to collaborating with the MCASB family and the Santa Barbara and international cultural communities, to present an expanded vision of what a museum can provide in our times,” she said.
In addition to conceptualizing the new curatorial and programmatic vision for MCASB, Mirvali will work with the museum board and staff to launch a capital campaign and plan for construction of a new stand-alone building on property the museum bought in 2017 with support from the Hutton Parker Foundation.
In preparation for the new museum, Mirvali will draw on her experience both conceiving projects and delivering impactful exhibitions.
She will create collaborative opportunities to further develop the museum’s connections with Santa Barbara and beyond in the next chapter of its history.
This year, Mirvali curated the show of Dubai-based Iranian artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian, presented at the 13,000-square-foot Officine Grandi Riparazioni in Turin, Italy.
In 2017, Mirvali was one of the invited curators at the Vienna festival in Vienna, Austria, where she curated a show of Austrian artist Dominik Steiger, and Berlin-based Iranian artist Shirin Sabahi. Her publication.
In 2016, she curated the first project in Latin America of Toronto-based Iranian artist Abbas Akhavan, which consists of a permanent intervention on FLORA ars+natura’s rooftop in Bogotá, Colombia.
Born in Iran and raised in San Francisco, Mirvali has been based in Berlin and Mexico City the last 15 years.
— Lauren Sharp for Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.