Olga Viso

Olga Viso is Senior Advisor for Global Partnerships in the Arts at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.  There she is part of a leadership team shaping an unprecedented partnership with visual artist James Turrell to complete the monumental earth work Roden Crater in Northern Arizona and develop an interdisciplinary academic enterprise with the art work at the center. She advises the ASU Art Museum on strategic initiatives and collaborates with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on a master's degree fellowship program in art history to culturally diversify the museum field. She is also a Curator-at-Large and Senior Advisor on Curatorial Affairs at the Phoenix Art Museum.

Previously, Viso was Executive Director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Director and Curator of the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She has held curatorial positions at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and has worked in art museums for thirty years.  As a scholar of contemporary and Latin American Art, she has organized numerous solo and group exhibitions that have toured internationally, including major solo projects with artists Juan Francisco Elso, Robert Gober, the Guerrilla Girls, Jim Hodges, Lee Kit, Guillermo Kuitca, Ana Mendieta, and Juan Muñoz.

Viso received her undergraduate degree from Rollins College and an MA in the history of art from Emory University, Atlanta.  In 2013, she was appointed by President Obama to the National Council on the Arts.  She has served on the Boards of the Association of Art Museum Directors and the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.  Viso was a Fellow in Residence at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York in 2019 and has a three-year appointment as a Visiting Scholar at the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum through 2021. She is an emeritus member of the Association of Art Museum Directors.