New director for Miami Art Museum

On Jan. 3, two months after announcing his resignation as chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Terence Riley was selected as the new head of the Miami Art Museum, Riley, who is 51, ends his 14-year tenure at MOMA next month, taking up his new directorial post on Mar. 15. He replaces Suzanne Delehanty, who stepped down on Dec. 31 after 11 years in the position.

The Miami Art Museum, currently in a 36,000-square-foot building, is about to launch a new construction project in Bicentennial Park [see "Front Page," June '03]. Miami voters recently passed a $100-million bond issue for the new facility. Riley will be in charge of hiring an architect to design the $175-million, 125,000-square-foot museum, will spearhead a fundraising campaign and will work to develop the permanent collection. He will also fill vacancies for a development director and associate curator.

While at MOMA, Riley played a central role in the museum's $858-million renovation and expansion, and mounted numerous shows, including "Light Construction" (1995), "The Un-Private House" (1999), "Tall Buildings" (2004) and surveys of the work of Bernard Tschumi (1994), Rem Koolhaas (1994) and Mies van der Rohe (2001).

Riley has been a part-time resident of Miami for a while, and recently finished building a home in the Design District. A partner in the New York-based architecture firm Keenan/Riley, he has been involved in several projects in Miami. As a condition of his new job, Riley will stop practicing architecture in order to devote himself to running the museum.

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