The new director and CEO of the Newark Museum of Art is a trained scientist and career arts administrator whom the board hopes will “integrate both science and art into the museum experience.”
Lisa Funderburke, 55, a Long Island native who earned a bachelor’s in botany and a master’s in biology from Howard University, began her $400,000 job as director and CEO of the state’s largest arts museum on Sunday, the NMOA board announced.
“Lisa brings to the museum a unique breadth and depth of experience as a museum and arts leader,” the board’s chair, Peter Englot, said in a Jan. 23 announcement.
Funderburke succeeds Linda C. Harrison, who announced in November 2024 that she would be stepping down after six years in the job.
Harrison’s stint included extending the 115-year-old painting and sculpture gallery’s reputation as a culturally inclusive institution, deepening its roots in the surrounding community, and presiding over planning and approval of 250 apartments and 4,216 square feet of new gallery space on the museum’s downtown campus along Washington Place.
The board highlighted Funderburke’s scholarship on governance and strategy in service to the arts, and her decade of experience as president and CEO of the Artist Communities Alliance based in Providence, Rhode Island, which supports artists and residency programs in the United States and abroad.
In a statement, Funderburke said, “Museums are most vital when they are responsive, collaborative, and deeply connected to the communities they serve.”
“Throughout my career, I have seen how cultural institutions function as essential civic infrastructure,” she added. “I am excited to work with the Newark community and broader networks of artists and partners to position the museum as a leader in national and global conversations about art, science, and cultural exchange — stewarding the museum as a shared public space for learning, creativity, and dialogue.”
Funderburke, who is also known professionally as Lisa Funderburke Hoffman, had also worked as associate director of the McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, North Carolina. She has also been affiliated with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Performing Arts Alliance, Orion Magazine, the Center for Cultural Innovation, and the Grantmakers in the Arts’ Individual Artist Committee.
She will preside over a private but mostly publicly funded nonprofit institution with an extensive collection of more than 300,000 works concentrated on African, Asian and American paintings and sculpture.
The collection also features objects of scientific and cultural significance, including a 1784 schoolhouse on its property and the adjacent John Ballantine House, the restored and re-interpreted mansion of one of Newark’s 19th-century beer barons.
As of last year, the museum had a budget of $18 million and a staff of 86 full-time and 69 part-time employees, on a 4-acre campus that includes the new development.
The museum anchors the eastern end of the Newark Arts & Entertainment District, conceived by Harrison and designated by Mayor Ras J. Baraka.
In a statement, Baraka praised Funderburke’s “artistic sensibilities, appreciation for analytical data, passion for the world around us, and belief in the transformative agency of people.”