MICHAEL PALMA MIR
Creative Capital, the nonprofit organization known for giving grants to artists, announced today that Susan Delvalle will be its new president and executive director, starting on June 1. She will assume her new role when Ruby Lerner, the founder of Creative Capital, steps down from her current positions, which she has held for 17 years.
Delvalle comes from the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling in New York, where she was director. In her term there, Delvalle oversaw the museum’s opening in 2014. Prior to that, Delvalle was the director of external affairs at El Museo Del Barrio.
“It’s quite an honor, and quite humbling,” Delvalle said of her new positions at Creative Capital. “I’m a career-changer, and I moved to New York to work in the arts, but it’s always been from the administration side. My work hasn’t been directly related to artists, and that’s what I’m most excited about getting at Creative Capital. I’m getting closer to working with and for artists.”
Delvalle was chosen by a search committee that included Creative Capital board chair Lyda Kuth; chair-elect Stephen Reily; founding board members Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, Ron Feldman, Lewis Hyde, and Sunny Bates; board members Ed Colloton and Annie Han; New Museum director Lisa Phillips; and former UCLA art department chair Russell Ferguson.
“I feel like something really beautiful has been built here for artists [and] people who really care about the arts, and I feel like I’m turning the reins over to someone who is a really creative institution-builder,” Lerner said. “I think she is really going to continue to foster that sense of community that makes Creative Capital so much fun.”