Tom Finkelpearl
Author, curator, and educator Tom Finkelpearl received his MFA from Hunter College in 1983. Former commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and former director of the Queens Museum, Mr. Finkelpearl is currently the Teaching Scholar-in-Residence at the Social Practice CUNY initiative. Speaking about his education at Hunter, he said, “At Hunter College I had truly extraordinary faculty: Rosalind Krauss, Robert Morris, Alice Aycock. I don't think there was a better art school in America at the time. It took me four years to get a degree because I was working full-time, but like all of my fellow students, I came out with zero student debt.”
A sculptor by training, he began his career as a public affairs officer at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center—now MoMA P.S. 1—in Long Island City, Queens. Finkelpearl is regarded by New York City’s arts community as an innovative leader, whose tenures at the Queens Museum, DCLA, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and P.S. 1 were marked by his inclusive vision and deep understanding of how arts institutions work. His commitment to the city’s public arts began early when he ran the Percent for Art commission under the Dinkins and Guliani administrations, working on over 100 public art commissions at DCLA in the 1990s. Appointed as Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014, he spent five years leading the nation’s largest municipal funder of culture, promoting artists and the arts to positively contribute to the economic vitality citywide.
Commenting on the impact Hunter College had on his career, Finkelpearl wrote, “Throughout my career in New York City, I've met a network of City University of New York alumni that have been mutually supportive, sharing a belief in public education and a loyalty to the University that gave us such a great experience. Hunter was my way of entering into the social, cultural, and urban life of NYC!”
He is the author of two books: Dialogues in Public Art 2000), and What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation (2013). He has taught at NYU, Queens College, and RISD.