NEW YORK, NY.- At the annual meeting of The Ukrainian Museum on June 23, 2013, Professor Renata Holod, University of Pennsylvania, was elected President of the Board of Trustees. She succeeds Mykola Darmochwal, who served as president of the board since June 2011. A highly accomplished art historian, Professor Holod has been a Trustee since 2011.

"It is an honor to be elected President of the Board of Trustees of such a distinguished institution as The Ukrainian Museum," said Prof. Holod. "Its record of exciting, ground-breaking exhibitions reaches back nearly forty years, and I look forward to helping it to inaugurate another forty. I see my tenure as one during which the baton of leadership can be prepared to pass to the next generation. Supported by the engagement and financial resources of all generations of Ukrainians within the far-flung Diaspora as well as in Ukraine, this institution has developed into a real jewel locally and globally. With its exhibitions, publications, collections and associated events, it has the required experience, energy and know-how to foster and develop cultural ties, to illuminate past historical narratives, and to shape our understanding of the visual cultures of Ukrainians past and present, near and far. I look forward to working with its excellent Board and the dedicated staff to achieve the highest profile and impact for the Museum's activities."

Renata Holod is Professor, and Curator in the Near East Section, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Harvard University, an M.A. in the History of Art from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in Islamic Studies from the University of Toronto. She has conducted archaeological and architectural fieldwork in Syria, Iran, Morocco, Central Asia, Turkey and Ukraine. She completed an archaeological/ethno-historical survey on the island of Jerba, Tunisia. Supported by a Getty Collaborative Grant, she presently leads a team currently engaged in the analysis of the grave goods of a medieval kurgan from the Black Sea steppe.

She has co-authored and edited several books including: City in the Desert: An Account of the Archaeological Expedition to Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, Syria, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs XXIII/XXIV, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978; Architecture and Community: Building in the Islamic World Today (Aga Khan Award Series), Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1983; and Modern Turkish Architecture, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984, 2nd ed. Istanbul, 2005, among others. A monograph The Last Kurgan: A Thirteenth Century Prince’s Burial in the Black Sea Steppe is in preparation.

Renata Holod is the Curator of the Near East Section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. She is member of the Advisory Boards of Muqarnas, the annual on Islamic visual culture, of Ars Asiatiques and of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture. She serves on the Scientific Committee for the Fondation Max Van Berchem, Geneva. She is Past-President of the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA). She is member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society of America, and of the Ukrainian Free Academy (UVAN). She joined the editorial board of Arkheolohiia, journal of the Institute of Archaeology, Kyiv in 2010, and was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Ukrainian Museum, New York in 2011.