PONCE, PR.- The Board of Trustees of the Museo de Arte de Ponce and The Luis A. Ferré Foundation announced the appointment of architect and cultural manager Alejandra Peña-Gutiérrez as the museum’s Executive Director. Peña has worked at the museum for more than a year, serving as its Deputy Director. Her duties had been the coordination of the curatorial, education and registrar departments, as well as overseeing the museum’s conservation laboratory, archive and library areas.

Peña, an arts professional, has an Architecture degree from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and studies toward a master’s degree in Art History from that same institution. She has a vast background in the museum field. Before moving to Puerto Rico she held the position of Deputy Director-General of Artistic Heritage in Mexico City’s Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, an entity under which eighteen museums operate, including the Museo Nacional de Arte, the Museo de Arte Moderno, the Museo Rufino Tamayo, and the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Residence Museums. She was also in charge of the National Conservation Center, the Directorship of Architecture, and the Office of Coordination of Visual Arts. Peña has also served as Director of Cultural Promotion in the General Directorship of Educational and Cultural Cooperation in Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the office to which all of Mexico’s cultural attachés in foreign embassies report to; Director of the Office of Cultural Mediation for the General Directorship of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes; and Deputy Director-General of that same institution prior to its split-off from the area of patrimony, when it also oversaw music, literature, and the scenic arts. Prior to these experiences, she served as Assistant Director and later Director of the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, INBA.

Peña began her museum experience as Head of Museography and Conservation in the Museo de San Carlos; and as curator, taking part in several important exhibitions in Mexico and abroad, while collaborating with the Museo de Arte Moderno. In addition to these positions, she has been a professor of History and Theory of Architecture in her alma mater.

Among her plans, the new Executive Director of the Museo de Arte de Ponce lists her interests in producing exhibitions that strike a balance between the collection of European art, for which the museum is both locally and world renowned, and its important collection of Puerto Rican art. One of her immediate objectives is to seek a greater integration between the community and the institution. She hopes to forge even closer links to the community and to foster an even greater interest in the museum so that it will be seen not just as the custodian of a large and fascinating collection of art, but a cultural institution that makes important contributions to the surrounding community. Part of her vision for the museum is to maintain the international profile that the institution has been cultivating for several years, engaging in exchanges with other institutions so that the museum’s works or collections can be taken to other countries and other museums’ works brought to Puerto Rico, so that those who do not have the opportunity to travel to see the world’s great masterworks can see them in the museum in their own “home town.”

Alejandra Peña says, “I’m very excited about this appointment. I want to strengthen the museum’s procedures and help make the institution even more central to the development of art and culture in Puerto Rico.”

The Board of Trustees, The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, and the staff of the Museo de Arte de Ponce are delighted to have a professional of the caliber of Alejandra Peña as their new Executive Director, and are confident that under her guidance the Museum will be even stronger as it continues into the future.