Dear colleagues,
I am pleased to share the news that Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch will become the next executive director for the arts within my office, effective November 2, 2026.
Kathryn joins the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts (OVPA) to work with me and our team on the arts agenda for the future of the MIT arts. I am grateful to Stacy DeBartolo for her service as interim executive director, and I look forward to Stacy and Kathryn working together as Stacy steps into a new role of director of administration and finance for the Office of the Arts. Before Stacy, Leila W. Kinney held the executive director role for close to two decades.
Kathryn comes to us from the School of Architecture and Planning, where she is the assistant dean for HR and administration. In that role, she has collaborated with faculty leaders to coordinate research and academic program staffing and support across the school. Her leadership has been especially important during a period of significant change for SA+P.
Kathryn first joined MIT in 2022 as deputy director of the MIT Museum, where she helped open the museum’s new home in Kendall Square, served six months as interim director, and led the Museum’s first museum-wide strategic planning process. Her projects there included establishing a free membership program for Cambridge residents, offered in six languages.
Before MIT, Kathryn was director of collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she was responsible for the institution’s accessions strategy and processes and adopting the country’s first Colonial-era provenance policy. She was also department head and Teel Curator for African and Oceanic Art at the MFA, where she curated Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity. Earlier, she was associate curator for African art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where she reinstalled the collection in new and expanded galleries. She is the author of The Benin Plaques: A 16th Century Imperial Monument (Routledge, 2018). Her earlier career includes leading the grant development department at Plan USA, a global children’s nonprofit, and supporting journalists in Africa with Internews Network.
Kathryn holds a PhD in African art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and a BA from American University.
Please join me in welcoming Kathryn to this new role!
Sincerely,
Keeril Makan
Vice Provost for the Arts
Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology