Alison Gass

Alison Gass is ICA San Francisco’s Founding Executive Director. Her leadership in museums has reflected a sustained commitment to building globally-minded and community-engaged exhibitions programs and diversifying museums’ collections, exhibition programs, staff and visitorship. Gass was appointed the Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago where she launched the Feitler Center for Academic Engagement. Previously, she was the Chief Curator at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, and Assistant Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. ICA SF isn’t her first “startup” museum. After leaving SFMOMA, Gass served as Founding Chief Curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, where she helped launch the new building, recruited a staff, and established a global contemporary art program. She holds degrees in Art History from Columbia University and the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU.

As a free museum at the city’s core, ICA SF—under Gass’s leadership—is pioneering a bold new model for museums, rethinking philanthropy, funding structures, collecting practices, and operational transparency.

Alison Gass will be speaking at the MuseumNext Forecast Summit 2025 :

Unbuilding the Museum: Public–Private Partnerships for the Future of Art

What happens when museums stop thinking of themselves as buildings, and start acting like citywide catalysts? ICA San Francisco is redefining what it means to be an arts institution in the 21st century by partnering with visionary developers and civic leaders to activate sites across the city with major commissions and experimental public projects. In this talk, Founding Director Ali Gass will explore how ICA SF is unbuilding the museum—channeling resources into artists and communities rather than bricks and mortar, and proving that public and private collaboration can create a more agile, equitable, and future-facing cultural model.