New Sheriff in Town

Flux Factory’s Board of Directors is pleased to announce the appointment of Christina Vassallo as Executive Director. She succeeds Chen Tamir, who, after five years of involvement with Flux as a Curator and Executive Director, had a major impact on its artistic programming and greatly expanded its organizational capacity.

According to Board member Nick Griffin, “Chen Tamir has done so much in her role as Executive Director to guide Flux through what has been a very challenging, but also very fruitful period. So it is of course with much sadness, and a great deal of whining, that I have accepted her decision to step down. That said, I could not be more excited or confident about the prospect of working with Christina Vassallo. She brings the aesthetic sensibility of a curator, the organizational skills of an administrator, and the passion of a true believer in the transformative power of an organization like Flux.”

Christina Vassallo joined Flux Factory in January 2010. As Adjunct Curator she co-curated the most recent Flux exhibition, The Typhoon Continues and So Do You. She is spearhearding additional upcoming projects, including hosting a quarterly meet-up and curator’s support network, as well as an interlocking series of events that address key concepts of collaborative art-making practices (Congress of the Collectives). As Executive Director of Flux Factory, she plans to preserve the best of Flux Factory’s unique culture and mission while further define the organization’s relationship to the larger cultural landscape of New York City. By procuring resources for projects, arranging collaborations with other collectives and partnering organizations, and providing a welcoming context for seemingly impossible ideas, Vassallo hopes to expand Flux Factory’s profile as an incubator for the creation of new artworks.

Vassallo made her curatorial debut in 2003 with a series of weekend-long exhibitions in a Queens apartment. Since then she has organized projects for a variety of venues. Notable projects include a 40-person exhibition in the abandoned St. Cecilia’s convent (system:system), a miniature golf course inspired by US immigration policy for Jersey City Museum (The Golden Door), a program of digital artworks projected onto the Manhattan Bridge through NYC DOT (Bright Nights), and a traveling show about macabre tendencies in contemporary Norwegian art at chashama and Lafayette College (DARKNESS DESCENDS: Norwegian Art Now). Vassallo previously served as Associate Director of Kinz, Tillou + Feigen gallery and ART&IDEA gallery, as well as Assistant Curator at American Federation of Arts. In 2007 she founded Random Number, her curatorial platform. She holds a B.A. in art history from New York University and an M.A. in visual arts management from NYU.