Alison "Ali" Gass is an American curator and museum director. She is the founding director of the

Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF) is an American contemporary art museum that opened in October 2022, and is located in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco, California. Admission is free. About The Institute of Contemp ...

. She has served as the director of the

Institute of Contemporary Art San José The Institute of Contemporary Art San José (ICA) is a nonprofit art center and gallery founded in 1980, and located in the SoFA District of Downtown San Jose, California, U.S. It supports contemporary artists working in painting, printmaking, s ...

Smart Museum of Art The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The permanent collection has over 15,000 objects. Admission is free and open to the general public. The Smart Muse ...

, and chief curator of the

Cantor Arts Center The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art, and commonly known as the Cantor Arts Center, is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

Biography

Gass is a native of the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. She obtained her BA from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and MFA from the

New York University Institute of Fine Arts The Institute of Fine Arts (IFA) of New York University is dedicated to graduate teaching and advanced research in the history of art, archaeology and the conservation and technology of works of art. It offers Master of Arts and Doctor of Philoso ...

. Gass began her museum career as a curatorial assistant at the

Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area. List of Jewish museums Notable Jewish museums include: *Albania ** Solomon Museum, Berat *Australia ** Jewish Muse ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, then as an assistant curator of painting and sculpture at

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

. At SFMOMA, she curated

SECA Art Award The SECA Art Award is a contemporary art award program that has been organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) and supported by its auxiliary SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) since 1967 to honor San Franc ...

exhibitions and assisted with the organization of the

Luc Tuymans Luc Tuymans (born 14 June 1958) is a Belgian visual artist best known for his paintings which explore people's relationship with history and confront their ability to ignore it. World War II is a recurring theme in his work. He is a key figure ...

retrospective. She was named a young curator to watch by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' in 2010. In 2012, she became deputy director and chief curator at the

Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (colloquially MSU Broad), is a contemporary art museum at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. It opened on November 10, 2012. History On June 1, 2007, Michigan State received a $28 millio ...

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...

. She helped launch the new building designed by

Zaha Hadid Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid ( ar, زها حديد ''Zahā Ḥadīd''; 31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi-British architect, artist and designer, recognised as a major figure in architecture of the late 20th and early 21st centu ...

and established a global contemporary program featuring artists such as

Jessica Jackson Hutchins Jessica Jackson Hutchins (born 1971) is an American artist from Chicago, Illinois who is based in Portland, Oregon. Her practice consists of large scale ceramics, multi-media installations, assemblage, and paintings all of which utilize found obj ...

Hope Gangloff Hope Gangloff (born 1974) is an American painter based in New York City who is known for her vividly-colored portraiture. Early life and education Gangloff was born in Amityville, New York. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper ...

Teresita Fernandez Teresita may refer to: * Teresita (given name), a feminine given name * Teresita (genus), ''Teresita'' (genus), a genus of moths in the family Oecophoridae * Teresita, Missouri, United States, an unincorporated community * Teresita, Oklahoma, Unite ...

, Sharon Hayes. In 2014, Gass was named associate director for Collections, Exhibitions, and Curatorial Affairs at the

of Stanford University. She was chief curator at Stanford when she was appointed director of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 2017, serving until 2019. She also taught at

California College of the Arts California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996 it opened a second campus in San ...

and

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

. Gass was named director of the Institute of Contemporary Art San José (ICA SJ) in 2020. In 2021, Gass joined the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF), an experimental, non-collecting museum featuring a range of temporary exhibitions, as its founding director. During the pandemic, she raised 2.5 million for the fledgling institution that is set to open in the fall of 2022.

Personal life

Gass is married to architect Alec Hathaway. The couple has two children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gass, Alison Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American art curators Directors of museums in the United States Columbia College (New York) alumni New York University Institute of Fine Arts alumni Stanford University people University of Chicago people Michigan State University people