The new and expanded Miami Art Museum just took a great leap forward. The museum has announced it will welcome Tobias Ostrander as its Chief Curator and first Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs next month. Ostrander, a visual arts curator with nearly two decades of experience at some of the world’s top arts institutions, will develop and oversee MAM’s public, education and exhibition programs.  He joins MAM after serving as the director of El Museo Experimental del ECO, an alternative contemporary art space run by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City. Prior, Ostrander served as the curator of contemporary art at Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City.

The appointment of Ostrander to MAM’s chief curatorial post comes as the Museum prepares for the move to its new, Herzog & de Meuron-designed facility in downtown Miami’s Museum Park, scheduled to open  in 2013. The new MAM will be more than three times the size of its current facility, with 32,000 square feet of galleries, providing space for larger and more varied displays of the Museum’s rapidly growing permanent collection and special exhibitions.  The announcement follows an international search led by MAM’s curatorial search committee.

Knight Foundation Vice President of the Arts Dennis Scholl, who serves as a MAM trustee and chair of the Museum’s curatorial search committee, notes that Ostrander’s background will be an ideal fit with MAM’s curatorial mission: “Our committee searched the globe for the right person to lead MAM’s programming team and shape the Museum’s curatorial direction.  Tobias’ experience curating and designing exhibitions – coupled with his background in contemporary and Latin American art – proved to be the perfect match for MAM’s programmatic priorities and the uniquely diverse community the Museum represents.”