Suzanne Delehanty: Leading Museums
Suzanne Delehanty has had a distinguished career in the arts as a museum director, curator, and art consultant.
Delehanty began her career in Philadelphia at the Institute of Contemporary Art of the University of Pennsylvania, which gained national prominence during her directorship in the 1970s. She has also served as director of the Neuberger Museum of Art at State University of New York in Purchase, the Contemporary Arts Museum (CAM) in Houston, and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University.
In 1995, Delehanty was appointed Director of the Center for the Fine Arts in Miami, which became the Miami Art Museum (MAM) in 1996, and was renamed the Perez Art Museum Miami in 2013. From 1996 to 2005, Delehanty directed MAM and in 2005 was named Founding Director of the institution which she helped to establish.
She started MAM’s permanent collection, which focuses on international art of the 20th and 21st centuries. She also established the largest art museum education program in Miami-Dade County, and created one of the most ambitious special exhibition programs in the country.
During Delehanty’s watch, the Miami Art Museum took a leadership role in securing a prominent waterfront site from the City of Miami for Museum Park — two new freestanding museums of art and science as well as a sculpture garden. She also provided leadership for the successful passage of a $2.9 billion Miami-Dade County General Obligation Bond program. In 2004, by a 65 percent majority vote, the Miami Art Museum was awarded $100 million in capital funding from this initiative.
In addition to her role in advancing the long-range plans of the institutions she has led, Delehanty has organized numerous exhibitions and publications. When Delehanty directed the Institute of Contemporary Art, she organized groundbreaking exhibitions of the work of Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, Nancy Graves, Robert Morris, George Segal, Joan Jonas, Richard Artschwayer, and Video Art, which was selected as the United States entry for the 1975 Biennial in Sao Paulo. While leading the Neuberger Museum, she curated The Window in Twentieth-Century Art and Soundings, one of the first comprehensive surveys of sound in art from 1900 to 1980. At the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, solo exhibitions of the work of Fred Sandback, James Lee Byars, Tony Cragg, and Guillermo Kuitca were mounted during her watch. She revitalized the publications program at the Zimmerli Art Museum and spearheaded the Converge™ publications to document the Miami Art Museum’s new work series dedicated to cultural diversity.
Delehanty has also served on numerous committees and boards, among them the Art Museum Advisory Council at Princeton University; the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions; the Committee for Art in Public Places, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; and the Board of Directors of the
Museums of Florida History, Tallahassee; and the Advisory Council of Art for the Twenty-First Century, New York. Currently, she is on the Advisory Board of DASH, Miami‘s Design and Arts High School and President of the Board of Directors, Donna Dennis Art Foundation, Inc., based in New York.
Today Suzanne Delehanty is principal of SUZANNE DELEHANTY LLC which she established in 2006 to provide strategic planning and art advisory services for initiatives that bring art, artists and communities together. The firm serves an international roster of clients, drawing upon
Delehanty’s extensive museum experience. Clients include: the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian; Perez Art Museum Miami; Museum of Northwest Art in Washington State; the City of Winter Park, Florida; Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami; and the Miro Foundation in Barcelona among other institutions and individuals. For a complete resume, please visit www.suzannedelehanty.com
Born in Southbridge, Massachusetts, Delehanty now resides in Miami. She holds a B.A. in History of Art from Skidmore College and has pursued graduate studies in History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She has also benefited from ongoing executive education at Columbia, Yale and Harvard universities.
The videos below are organized by topic and run between 30 seconds and 7 minutes. Click on any video. You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.
EXPOSURE TO BROAD INFLUENCES: 0:50 sec.
INSIGHT & INSPIRATION: 0:28 sec.
DEVELOP A VOICE: 0:49 sec.
VALUES FIRST-RATE EDUCATION: 0:56 sec.
SEIZES OPPORTUNITIES: 1:29 min.
SEIZES OPPORTUNITIES: 3:21 min.
UNDERSTANDS THE BUSINESS OF ART: 0:48 sec.
CREATES A UNIQUE PERSONAL BRAND: 6:12 min.
PERSEVERANCE FURTHERS: 3:51 min.
COLLABORATION: 1:16 min.
OVERCOMES CHALLENGES TO SUCCEED: 1:36 min.
COLLABORATION: 1:05 min.
UNDERSTANDS THE BUSINESS OF ART: 0:38 sec.
SELF-CONFIDENCE: 1:46 min.
SELF-CONFIDENCE: 1:24 min.
INSIGHT & INSPIRATION: 0:48 sec.
UNDERSTANDS ARTISTS’ NEEDS: 0:33
COLLABORATION: 3:31 min.
CRITICAL THINKING: 2:00 min.
SERENDIPITY: 1:20 min.
OVERCOMES CHALLENGES TO SUCCEED: 2:21 min.
COMMUNITY VALUES: 1:41 min.
INSIGHT & INSPIRATION: 1:04 min.
CRITICAL THINKING: 2:25 min.
UNDERSTANDS THE AUDIENCE’S PERSPECTIVE: 1:23 min.
UNDERSTANDS THE BUSINESS OF ART: 0:43 sec.
