{"id":785762,"date":"2026-09-28T23:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T23:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/785762\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T23:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T23:16:08","slug":"vancouver-art-gallery-makes-its-interim-leaders-permanent-co-chief-executives-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/785762\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver Art Gallery makes its interim leaders permanent co-chief executives – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The board of trustees of the Vancouver Art Gallery<\/a> (VAG) announced on Monday (28 September) that it has appointed\u00a0Eva Respini\u00a0and\u00a0Sirish Rao\u00a0as the institution\u2019s co-chief executives, confirming a dual leadership model that has been in place as a temporary measure since March 2025, when the former chief executive Anthony Kiendl stepped down<\/a> (he subsequently took the helm<\/a> of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver).<\/p>\n

The end of Kiendl\u2019s five-year term came a few months after the gallery pulled the plug<\/a> on an ambitious but costly building project<\/a> initiated by his predecessor, Kathleen Bartels, on which the gallery had already spent C$60m ($42m). A few months later, a huge deficit resulted in the laying off of around 30 employees<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The decision reflects the board\u2019s confidence in Respini (who will continue to serve as chief curator) and Rao (who will also serve as executive director), who it says have stabilised the gallery\u2019s finances, deepened its connections to artists and the wider community, and formulated a long-term vision for the VAG\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

\u201cEva and Sirish have demonstrated exceptional leadership distinguished by shared purpose,\u201d Jon Stovell, the chair of the gallery\u2019s board of trustees, said in a statement. \u201cThey each bring different but deeply complementary perspectives to the gallery, and together, they are expanding our sense of what the Vancouver Art Gallery can be and the role it can play in the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n

Respini came to the VAG<\/a> in August 2023, after several years as the deputy director and chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, where she curated an exhibition by Firelei Baez<\/a> that she brought to the VAG in 2024. Previously, she was a curator in the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

In her first three years at the VAG, Respini has strengthened its collection through major acquisitions and gifts, including works by\u00a0Nan Goldin and Stephen Shore,\u00a0and 122 works from the\u00a0Brigitte and Henning Freybe\u00a0collection<\/a>, the most significant donation of international contemporary art in the gallery\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Rao, who came to the VAG in January 2023, has a varied background including as the director of Tara Books, a publishing house based in Chennai, India, as an author and public intellectual, and as a co-founder of the Indian Summer Festival in Vancouver. For an institution that some feared had lost its way, Rao\u2019s certificate as a Himalayan mountain guide is also notable.<\/p>\n

Since joining the VAG, Rao introduced the BC Parks Foundation\u2019s PaRx prescription programme, an initiative that enables healthcare professionals to prescribe free gallery admission<\/a> to their patients. He has also advanced the gallery\u2019s Centre for Global Asias<\/a> as a national platform for exhibitions, research and public programming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The board of trustees of the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) announced on Monday (28 September) that it has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[41087,6225,6485,6486,626,1120,96,10345,56,54,55,30273,76284],"class_list":["post-785762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-appointments-departures","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-museums-heritage","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-vancouver","tag-vancouver-art-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}