Expo Chicago: Directors Summit 2025 Amanda De La Graza
EXPO CHICAGO will celebrate its fourth annual Directors Summit, April 24-26, 2025. The initiative has previously gathered an emerging generation of art museum leaders from across the country. For the first time in 2025, the program will include distinguished leaders from across the globe.
This year’s Directors Summit roundtables will consider the museum as a living organism that serves to heal, protect, connect, and create. Complex structures of mutually interdependent parts, museums are challenged to heal past histories, protect against present threats, support the creative process, and engage communities in transformative life experiences. Providing case studies to study and learn from, Directors will share their perspectives and experiences reflecting the unique challenges and opportunities in this moment of dramatic change.
The Summit features a keynote lecture by Julie Trébault, Executive Director of Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), who will speak about contemporary global trends and artistic free expression. The Directors Summit is in partnership with museum consultant Jill Snyder (Principal, Snyder Consultancy). Generously supported by Bloomberg Connects, Heritage Auctions, and Museum Studios.
2025 Participating Directors
Amanda de La Garza
Artistic Deputy Director
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
(Mexico, 1981) Amanda de la Garza is curator and art historian. In 2024, she was appointed Artistic Deputy Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid, Spain. Previously, she was the Head of Visual Arts at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and the Director of the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC - Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo). She holds a BA in Sociology, and a MA in Social Anthropology and Curatorial Studies. From 2012 to 2019 she worked as Adjunct Curator at MUAC. She has developed curatorial projects in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Spain and USA. She has been awarded the Emerging Curators Prize, Frontiers Biennial, and several research grants in Mexico and abroad.
Some of her recent curatorial projects include Atlas Western. Chantal Peñalosa (MUAC, 2022) Leandro Katz. Project For the Day You’ll Love Me and the Ghost Dance (MUAC, 2018), Tlacolulokos (LALA-PST, Getty Foundation/Los Angeles Central Library, 2017), Ignasi Duarte. Fictional Conversations (MUAC, 2017), Oscar Santillán. Macula (MUAC, 2017), To the Artist of the World. The Museum of Solidarity Salvador Allende. Mexico/Chile 1971-1977 (MUAC-MSSA, Santiago, Chile, 2016); Isaac Julien. Playtime & Kapital (MUAC, 2016); The thick sap. Equidistant essays on the tropics (Casa del Lago, Mexico City, 2016). Jeremy Deller. The infinitely ideal of the popular (MUAC, CA2M, Madrid, 2015); Harun Farocki. Vision.Production.Opression (MUAC, 2014) and Hito Steyerl. Circulationism (MUAC, 2014). She has published poems, interviews, reviews and academic papers in local and international journals on subjects such as poetry, documentary photography, urban studies and contemporary art. She is interested in interdisciplinary practices in contemporary art that involve poetry, archive, cinema, Social Sciences, archival research and contemporary dance.
