Mia’s New Director

The Board of Trustees at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is proud to announce it has elected Dr. Katherine Crawford Luber to be the museum’s next Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President. Luber will succeed Kaywin Feldman, who left Mia in March 2019 to become the director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Luber comes to Minneapolis from the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), the only encyclopedic fine art institution in south Texas, where she has served as the Kelso Director for the last eight years.

On January 2, 2020, Luber will begin her new role as head of Mia, the largest arts institution in Minneapolis, overseeing the museum’s renowned encyclopedic collection and 250-person staff.

“With Dr. Luber, we have selected an exceptional leader to be the twelfth director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art,” said David Wilson, chair of Mia’s Board of Trustees. “Mia is entering a period of transformation as we embark on an ambitious campus rejuvenation and double down on our inclusion, equity, and diversity initiatives to ensure our outstanding art collections and ambitious exhibitions and education programs serve every community. Katie possesses the curatorial and management experience we sought in a leader. She has an authentic, passionate vision for how art can engage, educate, and delight us all.”

Luber said, “Throughout my career, I have demonstrated the importance and power of art to impact people and communities. During my tenure as Director of the San Antonio Museum of Art, we saw our museum attendance grow substantially as we increased our engagement with and outreach to communities with different motivations, interests, and needs. I am now looking forward to getting to know the diverse communities of the Twin Cities, and to bring my experiences to bear to ensure that Mia continues to be an art museum in which everyone can both learn about diverse cultures as well as see and engage with their own history. I am so excited to build on the tremendous legacy of success and innovation as we move into the next one hundred years at Mia.” 

Born and raised in Texas, Luber’s pathway to art museum leadership combines traditional educational and work experiences with out-of-the-box aspects that strengthen her management and leadership skills. She has a B.A. in art history from Yale University, an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in art history from Bryn Mawr, where her dissertation focused on the paintings of Albrecht Dürer. She was subsequently awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in residence at the Kunthistoriches Museum in Vienna to support this scholarship, after which her dissertation was published by Cambridge University Press. Prior to arriving in San Antonio, Luber’s other art museum positions included serving as a research associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, for nearly 10 years, as a John G. Johnson Curator of Northern Renaissance and Baroque Paintings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she oversaw the reinstallation of those collections, engaged with the museum’s 19th-century French paintings, researched and installed the museum’s collection of Latin American Colonial paintings, and oversaw the installation and mechanical renovation of the building housing the museum’s world-famous Rodin collection. Luber also completed an M.B.A. at Johns Hopkins University, and as founder, president, and CEO launched, managed, and ultimately sold a successful start-up company, underscoring her capacity for innovation.