By Alex Robinson
The Queens Museum named Laura Raicovich as its new executive director and president last week, replacing Tom Finkelpearl, who is leaving to join Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration.
When Raicovich, 41, joins the museum Jan. 1, she will bring a wealth of knowledge in overseeing arts organizations.
She served as the director of global initiatives at Creative Time, a nonprofit that commissions public art around the world, since 2012. Before that, she was deputy director of the Dia Art Foundation, which supports ambitious artists seeking to undertake visionary projects.
“I really believe that artists have the capacity to really help us see the world in ways we wouldn’t have otherwise imagined,” she said in an interview. “One of the reasons I’m super interested in taking on this extraordinary role at the Queens Museum is that given the museum’s history and programs, it’s the perfect place to intersect artists with the things normal people are confronting in their everyday lives.”
Raicovich lauded the Queens Museum’s community-based programs and its ability to reach out to the neighborhoods surrounding it.
“There are many artists working in a socially engaged mode who want to connect with people, and the Queens museum is in this unique position because it has great deep relationships with the communities around the museum.”
While Raicovich is currently a resident of Manhattan, she has strong connections to Queens. She lived in Long Island as a child and visited her grandparents in Astoria every Friday. She recalled sitting in traffic on the highwaynear Flushing Meadows Corona Park and the museum she would one day oversee.
“I would stare out the window at the Unisphere and try to figure out what that was,” she said.
Raicovich’s predecessor, Finkelpearl, was recruited to become de Blasios’ commissioner of cultural affairs back in April after 12 years at the museum.
Finkelpearl is credited with overseeing a $69 million expansion, which spurred a 50 percent increase in the institution’s attendance.
“Tom Finkelpearl brought an incredible amount of energy to the museum. The expansion of the physical space is extraordinary.” Raicovich said. “It really has changed the character of the space in a positive way and allows it to do so much more than it could previously.”
During his time at the museum, Finkelpearl hired community organizers to build a closer connection between the institution and the community that surrounds it, something Raicovich wants to take a step further.
“This is not only a national model but an international model on how museums can be more connected to the communities around them,” she said.
“My dream for the museum is that we produce programs that are so compelling and that make people so excited that they sit up and say ‘gosh, I have to get to the Queens Museum this weekend.’ The Queens Museum is a place with extraordinary potential and I’m delighted to be bringing it into its next phase of evolution.”
Reach reporter Alex Robinson by e-mail at arobinson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
