ABOUT THE PRESIDENT
Richard P. Townsend, an accomplished museum curator and director, and MOLAA’s new President and CEO, was most recently Deputy Director for External Affairs at the Miami Art Museum. In that capacity, he was the Chief Development and Marketing Officer with oversight of the annual fund, foundation and corporate capital campaign and all communications activities of the museum. He was responsible for record setting multi-million dollar annual fund results and raised significant capital campaign contributions. He also helped develop and fund innovative education programs and served on the organizing team for the nationally touring exhibition of the work of Argentine artist, Guillermo Kuitca, opening this October.
Richard was educated at Virginia Commonwealth University, receiving his BFA in art history in 1986, and then at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where he earned his MA in 1989. As a curator, he organized numerous exhibitions both here and abroad and published in international publications such as The Burlington Magazine, Apollo and the Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek of the University of Leiden.
Prior to his time in Miami, he was Executive Director and CEO of Price Tower Arts Center, a museum of art, architecture and design housed in the Price Tower, a landmark building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. During his tenure at Price Tower Arts Center, the museum’s annual operating budget and level of financial support more than doubled and attendance increased four-fold. While there, he also concluded a $10 million capital campaign and executed a $2.4 million project.
Simultaneously, he conducted an international search for a design architect for a proposed expansion. The Arts Center selected Zaha Hadid—the 2004 Pritzker Prize laureate. His other achievements there included the organization of the exhibition Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower, which toured to Yale University and the National Building Museum, Washington, DC, as well as the completion of the restored Wright interiors and the opening of an architecture study center. Richard has also held positions at The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; the University of Tulsa; and the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio.
Richard Townsend Press Release.pdf