After more than nine years, FIU’s Frost Art Museum director is leaving

Jordana Pomeroy, a longtime university art museum director, remembers the day she set off for her new job at Florida International University nine years ago. She drove out of Baton Rouge through a terrible rainstorm, she said, “and looked toward sunny Miami.”

Pomeroy, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU director, is soon heading on another journey. She is stepping down from the role on Friday to join the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire, as its CEO and director.

“I’m feeling great,” Pomeroy told the Herald. “I’m leaving Miami very saddened and also very happy. It’s a new chapter.”

A national search for the next museum director will begin in the coming year, said Elizabeth M. Béjar, the FIU Provost, Executive Vice President and COO, in a statement. Miriam Machado, the museum’s Director of Education, will serve as interim director in the meantime.

“We extend our deepest gratitude to Dr. Pomeroy for her exceptional leadership and contributions,” Béjar said. “Under Dr. Pomeroy’s tenure, the museum significantly increased philanthropic giving, expanded its collection, encouraged an ambitious exhibition program, and oversaw strategic planning for future growth.”

In her time at FIU, where she also worked as an adjunct professor, Pomeroy focused on fundraising for the museum’s endowment, created the museum’s first advisory council of faculty and community members, launched a program that encourages students and faculty to use the Frost as an educational resource, and oversaw the acquisition of notable artworks to the museum’s collection, including a donation of several Puerto Rican contemporary artworks.

Serving as the director for a university museum came with a strong sense of civic duty, Pomeroy said.

“That’s an ongoing quest,” she said. “How do you stay abreast of the university’s objectives and goals and translate them into the work you do as a museum, curator, educator [...] and lead the museum in that direction to support the work of these of the university.”

Originally from New York City, Pomeroy attended Bryn Mawr College and earned a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University. An expert on women’s art history, Pomeroy has authored and edited several books and articles and was the chief curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. Before joining FIU, she served as the executive director of the Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge.

When she first started, she recalled conversations she had with some visitors about how they enjoyed the museum, but it was just “so far away.” Pomeroy had learned that how “far” the museum seemed to visitors really depended on how bad traffic was, especially during the week. In an effort to make the museum an attractive destination, she scheduled more public events on weekends, and heard less complaints about the distance after that.

The city’s evolution has also played a role in people’s perception of the Frost, she said.

“It’s a little bit of an old fashioned idea since Miami has grown so much, and there’s a lot of growth out here,” she said. “We are the museum in the west part of Miami. ‘Out there’ isn’t so out there anymore.”

Looking back on her tenure at the university, Pomeroy said she enjoyed connecting with the diverse student population, many of whom were the first in their families to attend college, and noted FIU’s unique status as the nation’s largest Hispanic serving institution. Pomeroy said it was gratifying to see hardworking students enjoy themselves at the museum and explore their creativity.

“[Some] are working a few jobs so they could pay for their credits. That work ethic has really impressed me deeply,” she said. “And yet they want to take time to learn about the museum profession and just enjoy the exhibitions.”

Pomeroy starts her next chapter at Currier, a prominent museum boasting an encyclopedic collection, in September. She said now is a great time for the Frost to welcome a new director given the recent changes in leadership at FIU, including a new provost, president, CFO and head of foundation.

“Maybe that’s the most important thing of all, is that with the new head of foundation, who’s bringing in his own systems, I think there will be plenty of opportunities for the new [museum] director to do some serious fundraising,” she said.

A willingness to change is what Pomeroy loves about Miami and FIU. Though FIU is a large institution, it remains nimble and open to new ideas, she said.

“There’s a benefit to not being old and rooted. FIU and Miami change fast. You put a seed in a ground and it sprouts,” she said. “There’s room for entrepreneurship and innovation. That’s where the museum and university will continue to thrive.”

This story was produced with financial support from individuals and Berkowitz Contemporary Arts in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.