Lisa Funderburke named director and chief executive of Newark Museum of Art

The Newark Museum of Art has appointed Lisa Funderburke as its next director and chief executive, the museum said on Thursday. She starts at the Newark Museum on Monday. Since 2016, Funderburke has been president and chief executive of Artist Communities Alliance, an international service organization for artist residencies; under her direction the organization increased its staff to 13 and its annual budget to $2.5 million.

She was previously associate director of the McColl Center in Charlotte, N.C., and before that led the Charlotte Museum of Nature. A native of Long Island, N.Y., she holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in science from Howard University and said, "It’s a good time to apply my experience to a very specific place at a very specific moment, at a museum that I think is quite magical in how it shows up for the community." The museum, founded in 1909, is New Jersey’s largest, with 153 employees and a global collection ranked 12th nationally, containing more than 300,000 objects and noted strengths in Tibetan and Native American art.

It presents a much larger platform for Funderburke, the announcement said. The Newark Museum of Art has an endowment of $48.5 million and annual attendance exceeding 100,000. Its operating budget is $15 million, with about two-thirds of that coming from the city and state, the museum said.

In recent years it has sought greater local visibility by hosting weekly events such as dance parties and fashion shows.

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