Delliquanti will begin her new role on Monday, June 10, 2024.
“I am honored to build on the work of prior museum leadership and to reimagine the ways that the museum can contribute to campus and community life and learning,” Delliquanti said. “I am inspired by the possibilities and look forward to embarking on creative and collaborative work.”
Jeremy Youde — Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences — said Delliquanti’s experience and dedication to inclusivity make her the right person to take on this vital work.
“I could not be more excited to welcome Julie to UMD and the Tweed,” Youde said. “She has the right sort of experience, vision, and strategic thinking to build on the Tweed’s successes and help it enter its next era. Julie understands the power of a university art museum and has incredible experience in building connections between museums and the wider community.”
Delliquanti has been an arts administrator, educator, and curator in museums, contemporary art centers, and universities for more than twenty years and is recognized as an advocate for artists, audiences, and people-centered experiences. Most recently, she served as Head of Visitor Experience at University of California Irvine’s Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art where she was part of the senior leadership team building a new university art museum.
Prior to her role at UCI, she was Director of Education and Public Programs at Oklahoma Contemporary; Director of Education and Interpretation at Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; Executive Director of Atlanta Contemporary; and Exhibition Director and Associate Curator at Emory University’s Manuscript, Archive, and Rare Book Library. Early in her career she also worked as a museum educator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and managed Greater Minnesota Housing Fund’s traveling documentary photography exhibition “Portraits of Home: In Search of Shelter in Greater Minnesota.”
Delliquanti holds a master’s degree in arts administration from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in art education from California State University Long Beach.
“Through my work in university art museums, I have endeavored to create inclusive spaces for interdisciplinary object-based study, research, and teaching, cultivated and nurtured the curiosity of diverse publics, and provided meaningful experiences for students, faculty, and community to engage with artists, exhibitions, and collections,” Delliquanti said. “I believe in the power of a warm welcome, radical hospitality, collaboration, and art for all.”
As the Tweed Museum of Art’s director, Delliquanti will be responsible for steering the museum into its next chapter by providing a strategic vision, developing innovative exhibitions, building on existing relationships in the Twin Ports, fostering a culture of inclusion, continuing to diversify the collection, expanding the museum’s presence nationally, and providing pedagogical programming between the museum and the university and the wider community.
Delliquanti’s hiring is the culmination of a national search for the Tweed Museum of Art’s next leader. Founded in 1950, in recent years the museum prioritized community outreach and garnered a reputation for strong curation of contemporary American Indian art under the guidance of retired director Ken Bloom and the late associate curator Dr. Karissa White Isaacs. As stewards of one of the largest art collections in the state of Minnesota — totaling more than 12,000 objects — the Tweed Museum of Art is among the premiere cultural institutions in the Arrowhead region.