About
Christina Olsen is the director of the University of Michigan’s Museum of Art (UMMA) and from 2019 - 2023 was co-chair of the University of Michigan's arts initiative. Before coming to Michigan she served as the Class of 1956 Director at the Williams College Museum of Art. Olsen has more than 25 years of leadership experience in museums and foundations, including positions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum and Getty Foundation, and the Portland Art Museum. She lectures and writes frequently on the topic of the future of art museums, and the role of campus-based museums. Olsen has curated and produced many exhibitions and programs, including most recently Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s, at UMMA. Olsen is on the board of the Association of Art Museum Directors and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Williams College. She is a scholar of Renaissance art, and received a BA in history of art, with honors, from the University of Chicago, and an MA and PhD in art history from the University of Pennsylvania.
