In addition to serving as interim director, Saska has served as the museum’s chief curator and director of academic engagement

Hope Saska, CU Art Museum chief curator and director of academic engagement, has been named director of the CU Art Museum after serving as interim director for more than two years.

Saska was named director following an internal search as well as an assessment and advisory report issued last spring on the future mission, structure and goals of the museum.

 

Hope Saska, CU Art Museum chief curator and director of academic engagement, has been named director of the CU Art Museum after serving as interim director for more than two years.

“I am thrilled and honored to be named director of the CU Art Museum,” Saska says. “With its rich collections and a mission to build community through exhibitions and programming that promote, inspire and generate interdisciplinary scholarship and cultural expression, the museum serves as a vital center for arts and culture on campus and throughout our region. I eagerly look forward to collaborating with museum staff, students, faculty and partners both on and off campus to build on our strengths and uphold our commitment to being an inclusive and welcoming space for all.”

A specialist in works on paper, Saska earned her PhD at Brown University with a dissertation on 18th-century graphic satire and caricature. While serving as the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Detroit Institute of Art and the Samuel H. Kress Curatorial Fellow at the Lewis Walpole Library, Saska honed her curatorial expertise working on a number of exhibitions and research and digital humanities projects. Saska embarked on her CU Boulder career in 2015, when she accepted a curatorial position at the museum and was promoted to chief curator and director of academic engagement in 2021. At CU Boulder, she has since curated over 30 exhibitions, many in collaboration with faculty and students.

In 2019, Saska co-authored a response paper to the CU Boulder Academic Futures Interdisciplinary Teaching, Research, and Creative Work Report: Is It an Academy? A Proposal to Expand Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Teaching at the CU Art Museum. The previous year, Saska co-authored a white paper for CU's Academic Futures Initiative: Is It An Art? A Case Study of Teaching at the CU Art Museum.

Saska teaches a graduate-level curatorial practicum with the CU Boulder Museum Studies program bi-annually. Deeply committed to the transformative role academic art museums play on college campuses, Saska serves on the board of the national Association of Academic Museums and Galleries as a co-representative for the Mountains-Plains region.

“Hope brings many years of experience in museums nationally and here at CU to this position, and I am excited for her expertise and leadership to drive CU Art Museum towards a sustainable future that is central to student and faculty engagement with the arts on campus,” says John-Michael Rivera, dean of arts and humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences. “I also want to thank Hope for her leadership through her long stint as interim director of the museum. Throughout many difficult transitions and assessments, her stewardship stabilized and positioned the museum for great successes in the future.”

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